


Lost & Found

by b99xperaltiago



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: All Finished, Amnesia, Angst, Cross-Posted on Wattpad, F/M, How Do I Tag, I Can't Believe I Wrote This, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Surprisingly, but at the same time i did, first crossover with ao3 and wattpad!, i dont have a lot of standards, i know its done a lot but I liked the idea, isn't not original in anyway, ive only just noticed it does XD, mentions of murdering, talk of blood, that doesn't sound dark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-04
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:02:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 18
Words: 24,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23018242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/b99xperaltiago/pseuds/b99xperaltiago
Summary: After weeks of working one grueling drug case, Jake finally gets the lead that can get him to one of the biggest suppliers in the city. However when the bust goes sideways, Jake ends up disappearing into thin air, his badge and gun discarded on the road and his radio smashed into pieces.After a year of searching, the nine-nine are still unable to find the missing detective and Amy, as well as the other detectives on that case, start to believe he's dead.By some miracle, however, one year after the detective goes missing, he shows up randomly in the precinct to report a crime. The one problem, he doesn't recognize the building or anyone inside of it. He doesn't even recognize his own name.(Cross-posted on Wattpad under the same name)
Relationships: Jake Peralta/Amy Santiago, Rosa Diaz & Amy Santiago, Terry Jeffords & Amy Santiago
Comments: 73
Kudos: 203





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> THIS IS COMPLETED SO EXPECT REGULAR UPDATES! I'm hoping to do them at least once a day, if not twice, depending on how school is that day and how much homework I'm given.

This case was really starting to bother him. 

He had been working it for what felt like months but nothing was coming out of it. He had already fought off Major Crimes a dozen times already, certain he'd be able to find the person responsible for one of the biggest cocaine and heroin stash in New York. He had brought in what seemed like hundreds of people from the streets, asking them about the guy, many of them let slip that this guy was their supplier but according to all of them it was never the guy in charge of this actually dealing out the supply, it was one of his buddies. A week ago he managed to catch one of the men responsible for the dealing out, but he refused to say the name of the person he was working for or anyone else on his team. 

It was at this point that he was considering giving up. 

That was until his CI gave him the best news he had heard all week. 

_"The guy's apparently gonna show his face tonight. I can't guarantee that he will but it's gonna be a huge bust either way with what could be a good ten kilos of the stuff."_ His CI had told him earlier that morning over the phone when he had first arrived at work. 

Jake grinned. "Thanks, George, that was really helpful." He said as he wrote down the address of the building he was told the deal was taking place inside before hanging up the phone.

This got the attention of Charles, who was sat on the chair beside his friend's desk. "George? As in your CI George?" 

The younger detective nods happily. "Yeah, he's told me there's a deal going on with my John Doe drug case, could be up to ten kilos of cocaine and heroin." 

Charles takes a small double-take to the notepad sat in front of Jake. He recognizes the building and furrows his eyebrows, looking back up to his friend. "The abandoned warehouse? There are so many deals done there every day, how do you know it's the right one?" 

Jake raises one eyebrow, tilting his head to one side. "C'mon, when has George ever been wrong? I've had him three years and he hasn't got a detail mixed up."

Sure thing, when the bust time rolled around, Jake and the assembled squad team approached the warehouse and the same guy from the week before was there, standing beside a much older man. 

However, when squat stormed the warehouse, the deal hadn't taken place yet but they managed to catch everyone involved. Apart from the leader, who had sprinted off when the raid had begun. 

Jake, on the other hand, had anticipated this and had gone to the back exit to catch him as he left the building, leaving the squad to take the rest of the warehouse. 

The thing he didn't anticipate was the fact that the older man would have thought of this too, and not exit through the back door. 

As Jake saw the older man sprint down the alley on the opposite side of the building, he curses under his breath. "Crap." He mumbles, taking off after the man. "We got a runner!" He calls out as loud as he can as he chases him down the alley.

When he reaches the main street again, the coast is clear, nobody in sight. He looks around for a moment, lowering himself down instinctively before feeling the cold metal hit place against the back of his head. 

"Put it down." The voice from behind instructs him quietly, him whispering it closely to the detective's ear. 

Jake slowly raises his hands before putting the safety lock on the gun and throwing it to the concrete floor. 

The guy takes the radio and badge from Jake's vest and throws them down with the gun, stamping on the radio with enough force it shatters under his foot. 

Back at the warehouse, Terry looks around curiously. "Where's Jake? He should be back by now." He sighs.

Rosa shrugs. "Maybe the guy took off."

The lieutenant looks to his radio and sighs. "He would have called fit in if he did but Jake was right next to the door, there's no way he could have got out and been able to run." 

They finished getting everyone into the patrol and squad cars before sending them off back to the precinct. As they turned back to the warehouse, Terry takes the back route, walking up to the door Jake was standing guard by. 

"He's not here," the lieutenant says slowly, looking around with his eyebrows furrowed, "And the door is still shut, where is he?" 

Rosa's eyes trail across the small alleyway before noticing an open door on the other side of the building. "The guy must have gotten out over there and ran down the alley." 

They take-off, jogging down the alley before stopping at the opening into the main road. 

"Dead end, they could have gone anywhere." Rosa sighs, looking to the left and down the empty street. 

That's when Terry speaks up from just off to the other side. "Diaz," he begins, gaining the detective's gaze, "It's Jake's badge."

Rosa furrows her eyebrows. "What?" She asks, approaching where the taller man was standing before looking down to see the detective badge staring back up at them. Then she sees the scattered pieces of plastic nearby. "And that must have been his radio too."

Terry looks up with wide eyes. "You think the suspect has him?" 

Rosa nods. "He wouldn't just throw his stuff on the floor and take off again."

* * *

"You're not gonna get away with this," Jake says, staring to the guy sat in front of him in the car, "My entire team knows I was going after you, they're gonna realize eventually that I'm not there anymore." 

The guy nods, turning to the backseat subtly to face the detective. "Oh yes I am, and do you know why?" 

Jake shrugs his shoulders. "How?"

He turns to the driver beside him. "Chocar el auto."

The detective furrows his eyebrows. "Some sort of secret language, huh? That's funny because I can speak Spanish, I learned for my wife... wait, why are you telling him to crash the car?!" Jake asks, sitting forward in his seat.

The guy just smiles. "You'll see," he says before facing the driver again, "Hazlo ahora."

Jake squints his eyes, trying to look out the front windscreen to see where they were but the darkness outside restricted his view. Then everything went to black.


	2. Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter isn't as long as the last one, I apologize for that but the chapters do vary in length. 
> 
> Thank you all so much for the feedback I received on the last chapter - it honestly made me so happy to read all of your comments and opinions. You may have heard it before but comments are an author's lifeblood and we're thirsty for it, so when I get comments it really does make my day <333
> 
> Enjoy chapter two!

Rosa and Terry hesitated inside the elevator for a moment as they first stepped inside. The lieutenant had Jake's badge, gun and as much of the radio he could pick up in bags in the hopes it could give them prints as to whoever was responsible for the suspected kidnapping. 

Silence trapped inside the elevator as Rosa hit the button for the fourth floor and the doors in front of them closed. She knew had to tell Amy that her husband was possibly taken by a huge drug dealer and could maybe even being held hostage by the guy. So she spoke up to announce her plan to Terry beside her. "I'll tell Amy," she said, looking away from the lieutenant before hitting the button for the third floor too, "You just find out who this bastard is." 

Terry slowly nods. "I'll let Holt know about it too, he can announce it to the rest of the squad."

The elevator stops on the third floor and the steel doors ding open in front of the detective and lieutenant. Rosa sighs audibly before stepping off and going out of sight as the doors close again. 

The detective goes over to Amy's desk just off the side of the bullpen for the third floor. She stops in front of the sergeant's desk and calls her name out, grabbing her friend's attention. "Amy, can I speak to you?" 

The sergeant looks up curiously and nods hesitatingly. "Sure." She replies, throwing her pen down on her desk and following the detective off to the side of the rustling bullpen.

Rosa pauses for a moment to figure out what to say but when she thinks she's got it, nothing comes out. 

Amy steps forward slightly, crossing her arms over her chest with furrowed eyebrows. "What's going on?" She asks, her voice filled with concern.

The detective can't speak for a minute, the words sitting on her tongue but she was unable to say them aloud. "It's Jake..."

The concern wipes over the sergeant's face, dropping down as far as it would go. "What's going on with him?" She stutters out. 

"He's..." Rosa begins, struggling to get to the end of her sentence. "He's ... gone." 

A questionable look plasters across Amy's face. "Gone?" She asks, furrowing her eyebrows slightly, "Gone how?"

Rosa hesitates for a beat. "We can't find him anywhere." She replies slowly.

Amy stares to her with the puzzled look still there. "I don't get it... he just left? He didn't say where he was going?"

The detective shakes her head. "No, we think someone took him."

"He's being held hostage?" Amy's eyes widen as her voice rises. 

Rosa nods slowly, looking down to the floor. "Yes, we think so."

A silent beat passes between the two cops before Amy speaks up again, putting her hands against her hips. "How can you be sure?" She questions, quirking her eyebrows up. 

"We found his badge lying in the street next to his radio which was smashed up. His gun was a few feet away from them both, too." Rosa responds.

"What were you doing?" Amy wonders. 

Rosa looks to the side slightly before speaking up, answering the sergeant's question. "His huge drug case - he was told by his CI this morning that the dealer would show his face. He stood by the back exit to catch the guy in case he ran as squat raided the front of the warehouse. Sure enough, the guy did run and we can only guess Jake chased him, only to be ambushed by him." 

"Do you have any idea who this guy is?" Amy asks, crossing her arms again.

The detective shakes her head subtly. "Terry's running prints on the gun and badge, he's also gonna try the radio but it was pretty smashed up so I can't guarantee anything. The guy ran as soon as the door opened, nobody got a good look on him either." 

A silence wraps around them both for a moment, the noise of the bullpen behind them only muffled as if a bubble surrounded the two of them. 

Amy sighs. "I can't believe this." She says, her voice cracking a little as she fought off the tears forming in her eyes.

Rosa leans forward and catches the sergeant in her arms, hugging her friend tightly. "We're gonna catch this guy and get Jake back, I promise."


	3. Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was gonna do this a little earlier but something came up and I got a little lost in time. Sorry. 
> 
> Thank you again for the feedback I got on the last chapter too, I published it just before I left for school and by the time I got back I was able to read all your amazing comments and they were honestly so worth six hours of hell. 
> 
> Enjoy chapter three!

Rosa slowly headed up the stairs to the fourth floor after having spent a good ten minutes talking to Amy. She had managed to get the sergeant to stop crying, telling her over and over again that they were going to find Jake. 

The detective knows in her heart not to promise something to someone, especially promising to solve a crime, but this was Jake she was talking about. She couldn't give up on him, for Amy, not after everything they had been through in the past. 

She enters the bullpen and gets closer to Terry's desk, stopping in front. "Anything?" She asks quickly and to the point.

The lieutenant sighs, shaking his head. "Fingerprints came up clean. There was nothing on them, only Jake's in the gun, which is pretty self-explanatory, and Jake most likely threw the gun to the floor when this John Doe ambushed him."

Rosa looks down as she shuffles quickly across the floor before sitting in the chair beside the lieutenant. "Are we sure John Doe took him? Would you consider there is a chance that maybe Jake took off?"

Terry shakes his head. "He's not like that, Diaz, why would he take off?"

Rosa raises her hands up in defense. "I'm not saying in any way that I think he took off, I'm just curious if you're being thorough with this, acting as though it was just a regular case and not one of our best friends."

The lieutenant leans closer and widens his eyes. "Why are you asking me if I'm doing my job properly?"

"I would be guilty of giving Jake special treatment too," Rosa replies quickly, snapping slightly to Terry, "I've known Jake for so long, I hate that we might have to report him as missing but I would rather want to think that someone took him rather than him wanting to run off."

Terry shakes his head. "For the second and last time, Jake is not like that. He wouldn't do that to the squad, and especially Amy."

* * *

_(two days later)_

The precinct was bustling. Whilst trying to contain everyone inside the hold-up, with the officers struggling to keep on top of it, the detective had moved inside to the briefing room for some quiet while they stood in front of the board. 

Charles sighs, throwing his head down into his hands. "Where the hell has he gone?" He asks to himself, his voice muffled by the palm of his hands pressed against his face.

Rosa folds her arms across the chest as she stares to the almost blank board in front of her. She subtly shrugs her shoulders. "I really don't know." 

Terry enters the room, making both detectives turn and face him, hopeful looks on their faces. He shakes his head. "The woman thought she saw Jake, but when I showed her a picture she said it wasn't the person she had seen." 

The two detectives mumble small curses under their breath as they both look back to the board.

It's only moments later that Terry speaks up again, breaking the sudden but quick silence that echoed throughout the briefing room walls. "Have either of you heard from Amy?" He asks.

They both pause and eventually Rosa shakes her head. "Not since the other day. I went down to the third floor to invite her to stay at mine that night but she was gone. One of her officers said she had to go home. Haven't seen or heard from her since."

Terry sighs. "This must be awful for her."

Rosa nods slowly. "I can't imagine." She replies before putting the pen in her hand down on the table beside her and going toward the door. "I'm going to check on her, I can't stand having not heard from her."

Terry nods and calls after her. "We'll text you if something comes up."

Rosa gives an out-of-place thumbs up off to the side as she walks through the bullpen before she pressed the button for the elevator dozens of times. 

When she got to her car, she pulled out her phone and texted Amy, just to give her a heads up that she was coming over. She didn't get a response. 

She drove over as fast as she could and used the spare key Amy had given her to enter the apartment building. The elevator was broken, so she had to go up five flights of stairs and by the top, she was somewhat out of breath. She knocked a little frantically on the front door. A moment passes before she hears Amy's voice from the other side of the door. 

"It's open!" Amy's voice rings past the wooden frame into the hall.

Rosa opens the door and sighs as she shuts it, her back from the apartment. "It's not safe to keep your door open, you know that." 

Amy shrugs from the couch. "I don't care, I'm sat right here, nobody can do anything." 

Rosa turns around with a small smile on her face before it drops back down it to a saddened look when she sees what Amy's watching on the TV. "Is that your wedding video?" She asks, going over to the couch and leaning over the back. 

Amy nods and smiles subtly. "Kinda. It was what Charles was able to get in his phone, which he made into a video for our first anniversary." 

Rosa joins her friend on the couch. "I can't believe you guys are gonna have your second anniversary in a few months, I can't believe you managed to tie down Jake for that long." She says, a smile reappearing in her face. 

Amy snorts with laughter. "He's done more for me than I've done for him."

Rosa shakes her head. "I doubt that." 

The sergeant then sinks into the couch, taking in a deep breath audible through the silent apartment. "I miss him." 

The detective pulls her friend in for a hug as they both watched the poorly-shot wedding video. "I miss him too."


	4. Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again, sorry for the short chapter, but I promise this is the shortest one in the story. 
> 
> Also, thanks for the comments on the previous chapter, it's really made my day because "Trying" this morning just left me depressed. 
> 
> Enjoy chapter four! (oh and before i forget, dustin is jake)

His head was pounding and it felt as though he had been hit by a truck. Physically speaking, he could have been but the memory of the whole ordeal was gone. He didn't even know where he was. 

As he opened his eyes slowly, the overhead lights burned the inside of his eyes, causing him to shut them quickly again. 

Just then he hears a voice from the end of the bed. A voice he doesn't recognize. "He's awake, he just opened his eyes." The man said - excitement seemed clear in his voice. 

And then a deeper voice speaks from closer to his side. "Mr. Garner, can you open your eyes for me again?" They ask. 

Garner? Are they talking to him? He's too tired to question it as he slowly opens his eyes again, the overhead light burning into his skull. 

The man stood in front of him was dressed in a white jacket and was carrying a board in front of him, which he would look down to several times before back up to him. He smiles when he looks up again. "Great," he says before giving the board a quick look again before back down to the patient in front of him, "Dustin, can you tell me what year it is?" 

He pauses for a moment, squinting his eyes for a second. "1999?" He asks.

The doctor's face drops before he thanks everyone in the room before leaving and shutting the door behind him. 

Immediately the two people sat in the chairs stand up and rush to the side of the bed. 

The younger one furrows his eyebrows. "You really think it's 1999?" He asks.

Then the older man shushes the other quiet. "Antonio, he's just woken up give him time." 

Antonio sighs and slides a chair to sit beside the bed, the older man doing the same thing a few moments after. 

"What happened?" He asks, his voice hoarse as he looks to the two men sat beside him with a questioning look. 

Antonio furrows his eyebrows. "You don't remember?" 

The older guy snaps. "Well if he thinks it's two decades ago then, of course, he ain't gonna remember what happened." 

He pauses, deepening his brows. "Wait, what year is it?" 

The older man sighs before responding. "It's 2020, son."

"What? Since when?" He asks.

Antonio speaks up, responding hesitantly. "Since like two weeks back, you've been out a few days."

A silence fills the room before he breaks it again with another question. He had so many questions, but this was the top of the list. "What happened?"

The elderly one clears his throat from the left before answering. "You were in an accident, a pretty bad one. Doctors weren't sure if you were gonna make it."

"An accident?" He asks, his voice raspy.

Antonio nods from the side. "The driver lost control of the wheel, was doing well over the limit and had a bit too much to drink, you almost went flying out of the car when he hit the tree. He was dead when the paramedics got there and you were only just alive. Gave us a one in million chance you'd pull through okay." 

The other guy cuts in. "But you did, you pulled through fine."

"Well, apart from the fact he can't remember anything since he graduated high school." Antonio sighs.

The elder smiles weakly. "But we'll get him home and we'll fix that, get the memories back flying in again," he responds before dead-eyeing the younger one sat on the opposite side of the bed, "Won't we Antonio? Just like we discussed if he woke up like this."

Suddenly, he breaks in, cutting before Antonio can say anything else to the elder man. "Who are you guys?" He asks.

The two men immediately looked shocked and hurt. Antonio pauses for a moment before laughing. "C'mon, bro, you can't not remember us."

He shrugs a little before shaking his head.

"I'm your brother, dumbass," Antonio replies before pointing over to the older man, "And that's Dad..." He adds, only to have Dustin shrug his shoulders again, "Curtis? You seriously don't remember us?" 

He just shakes his head. "No, not really, sorry."


	5. Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More Jake's point of view, but just remember that Dustin is Jake. It hurt to write Jake with a different name, but I managed to do it all. 
> 
> Please keep me up to date with your opinions of the story in the comments - I love to read them all, they make me so happy! <33
> 
> Enjoy chapter five!

"Isn't this risky?" As he wakes up again, the sound of Antonio whispering from the other side of the room is the first thing he hears. 

Then Curtis's voice can be heard beside Antonio, but he was so much quieter. "You know keeping him here is much riskier."

"C'mon, you and I both know he got a pretty bad blow to the head, he thinks it's 1999 for Pete's sake." Antonio reasons, the subtle sound of a sigh echoing throughout the room.

"Well you and I both know that the damage was supposed to be more severe," Curtis begins before turning his head to see him waking up in the bed, "Dustin! You're awake."

Dustin looks around the room with a puzzled look, sitting up in bed a little more. "Yeah, what's going on?" 

Curtis pauses before shrugging it off. "How long have you been awake?" He asks, the desperation in his voice.

He just shakes his head. "Like two seconds." He says with a small laugh, before repeating his previous question.

Before a beat can pass on the clock, Curtis replies again. "You're being discharged, isn't that great?"

A pause goes through the room before he speaks up again, furrowing his eyebrows. "I guess, but I thought they'd wanna keep me a bit longer to check."

Antonio nods along in the back of the room. "Yeah, that's what I thought too, but I was wrong."

Curtis smiles to the man in the bed before grabbing a plastic see-through bag from beside the hospital bed and throwing it into his hands. 

Dustin looks at the bag with furrowed eyebrows again before up to the two men in the room with him. "What's this?"

"Your personal stuff," Curtis replies, the impatient coming out in his voice as he walks toward the door, "You didn't have a lot on you, just your wedding ring, you left everything else at home before the accident."

"I'm married?" He asks, widening his eyes and sitting forward with a small smile on his face.

Antonio sighs. "You were, but she died."

His face drops back down again. "When?" 

Curtis speaks up again, the impatience much clearer as he puts his hand on the doorknob. "Two years ago," he replies harshly before staring at the man in the bed, "Now, get dressed, we're going in five minutes."

* * *

Once they had left the hospital, they quickly got into a van and took off on to the road. All three men stayed quiet the entire drive, only Curtis and Antonio leaning in to speak to each other every few minutes very quietly.

It took them an hour and a half before the van parked up in front of an old barn-looking building.

As they stepped out of the vehicle, Antonio smiled widely and pointed up to the building. "Welcome home, Dustin!" He shouts out before being scowled by Curtis, who was up by the front door signaling for the two of them to enter the barn. "You recognize it?" Antonio asks as they approached and entered the building.

He looked around the first room they entered before shaking his head slightly. "No, not really."

Curtis smiles, for the first time since they had left the hospital. "Well, that just because we've changed around the decor a lot since 1999. Starting tomorrow we're gonna work on getting your memories back, we're gonna go all over the place and see if any areas spark anything back to you, okay?" The older man asks.

He nods and smiles subtly. "Yeah." 

Antonio slaps him on the back before telling him to follow along. "I'm gonna show you to your room, as I take it you won't remember it."

He's taken on a small tour around the barn before they reach the second floor. "Your room used to be down the hall but dad changed it to make it into his office for work, your room is now right here," Antonio says before opening the door directly at the top of the stairs. 

The room is somewhat clean, but it looks as though it was made together very quickly. The bed seemed to be at an angle and the only other thing in the room was a dresser sat against the wall behind the door. What he presumed is his wallet is sat on the top of the dresser, with what he presumed is his phone sat beside it. 

"I'll let you get settled in." Antonio says before nudging him in the room and shutting the door behind him. 

The room was quite small so he doesn't have to throw far to get the bag he was thrown at by Curtis in the hospital on the bed. 

He looks to the wallet before opening it up. He checked the license inside and sees it was no longer valid - and that it hadn't been for a month. He guesses that's why his friend was taking him around in their car. When he sees the name printed in the license it definitely says Dustin Garner. 

"That just proves it then." He mutters to himself before throwing the wallet down again on the dresser before going over and sitting in the bed, it creaking under his weight.

There was just a small part of him that thought maybe he wasn't who they said he was, but as he thinks about it again he knows how stupid he sounds. They're his dad and brother for god's sake, why would he think otherwise? 

Downstairs, Antonio joins Curtis in the kitchen as Curtis was making something in the stove. 

"Are you stupid?!" Antonio quickly breaks the silence quietly as not to be heard upstairs. 

Curtis turns around quickly and glares at his son. "Excuse me?" He asks.

"Are we seriously gonna help him get his memories back? He's gonna know what we did!" 

Curtis shushes him quiet before shaking his head. "No, we're not gonna help him. We're just gonna get him further away from where he comes from so the cops get thrown off. We'll take him places they won't know where to find him. Then we'll go someplace really obvious and we'll finish the job we started. This time though, he won't have amnesia and think it's 1999 and the cops will find his dead body." 

Antonio nods but before he can say anything, Curtis speaks up again. 

"But now, we've just gotta keep up with this reality and keep him believing we're his family."

Antonio nods again. "Okay... don't scare the shit out of me again like that okay?" 

Curtis apologizes quietly. "Sorry, won't happen again."


	6. Six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back again with another chapter! Please keep responses coming in - I love to hear them - and enjoy chapter six!

It had been almost a week since the search for Jake had begun, and so far nothing had come up. They had talked to priors and everyone who was at the drug bust with the John Doe, but nobody gave up information about what the guy looked like. After forty-eight hours, they reported him missing and within another day, the news of the vanished-into-thin-air detective had quickly echoed through New York. 

Two days after Jake's face had cycled throughout New York, they got a tip from someone working at a nearby hospital, who reports that they had recently treated someone who looked very similar. 

When the squad arrived at the hospital, the doctor who claims to have treated Jake approaches them immediately. 

Amy goes up and meets the doctor halfway. "Hi, I'm Sergeant Santiago, you claimed to have treated a man following the description of detective Peralta?" She introduced herself, shining her badge toward the doctor.

The doctor nods. "Yes," he says with a small smile, "However his name wasn't the same."

"What did you treat him for?" Rosa asks, standing beside her friend in front of the man in the white coat.

He then shakes his head. "I'm sorry detective, that's under the strict laws of doctor-patient confidentiality, I'm legally not allowed to say."

Amy pipes up. "What if I told you that I'm married to detective Peralta, does that change it at all?" 

"Well, first of all, I would need to see legal proof of the marriage before I'm allowed to say anything that could break the rule," the doctor replies, causing both Rosa and Amy to roll their eyes, "And secondly, my patient's father claimed that his wife was deceased."

Amy furrows her eyebrows. "His father? Why would he do it?" 

Rosa shrugs. "Where are they?" She asks, snapping her attention to the doctor from Amy.

He shrugs. "I don't know. I went to check on my patient yesterday morning and when I went in there the room was empty. I checked after and the paperwork was signed for him to be discharged."

"Did his father give you the address on the form?" Amy questions, placing her hands on her hips.

The doctor pauses for a moment before nodding. "If it will help with the investigation, yes he did." 

Amy smiles. "Great, we'll need that information to be able to track down where his father took him." 

Before the doctor can leave to gather the information the sergeant asked for, Rosa speaks up too. "Also, we're gonna need security footage from inside and outside the hospital for facial recognition." 

The man in the white coat nods and goes behind the desk to access the open computer. 

He takes a few minutes before calling the two women back over again. He gives them the address his patient's father had given him before taking them to the back of the building for the footage.

After an hour of skimming through the footage from the morning the day before, Rosa sits back in her chair and sighs audibly. "Nothing. Absolutely nothing. He just vanished from the hospital again."

Amy shakes her head. "That isn't possible, he must have left in the afternoon."

Rosa sits back up and continues the footage from the afternoon the same day. As another hour goes by, the footage begins to get dark as the afternoon becomes the evening and night. However, still no sign of Jake and his father.

"Unless there really is something such thing as the cloak from Harry Potter, there is no way in hell he and his father are able to sneak past all the cameras the hospital have placed around the building." Rosa sighs, putting her head into her hands.

Amy stands from the chair and leaves the room. "Well, at least we've got the address his father gave the hospital to work with, that might lead us somewhere instead."

Rosa stands and follows the sergeant out of the room, closing the door behind her. "Yeah, hopefully."

They walk in silence to the reception to thank the doctor for the information he had given them earlier that day. They leave the hospital in the same silence they drove back to the precinct with, neither one of them talking until they reached the fourth floor when they were approached by Terry at the gate into the bullpen.

"Did you get a trace on the address?" Amy asks, knowing that's why the squad was back at the precinct - as she had sent them to analyze the address before Rosa and herself had spent two hours watching the security footage. 

Terry stumbles for a moment, hesitating with his answer before Rosa spits it out of him. He shakes his head quickly at the detective's threatening stare. "No, it was a fake address, the place doesn't exist."

Amy throws her fist down into the fence beside her before letting out an exasperated sigh. "Oh for the love of god," she mumbles to herself, "A fake?" 

Terry nods, handing her back the slip of paper he had retrieved from his desk when he had heard the elevator ding open. "Yeah, Boyle checked the address three times just in case there was a mistake in the system. Whoever this guy is, he's covering his tracks good."

Amy sighs, not pausing before telling the lieutenant who was responsible. "It's Jake's father. He's the one who's doing this."

Terry's eyes widen. "Roger? Why would he do this?" 

Amy shrugs. "I'm gonna call Karen, see if she would know anything about this."

She goes over to her husband's desk and sits down before pulling her phone out and calling her mother-in-laws number. 

Karen picks up on the first ring. _"Amy, hi, have you got anything on Jake?"_ She asks.

Amy sighs, looking to the floor of the bullpen, feeling the stares from Terry and Rosa burning the side of her face. "Uhm, we do, but it's not solid." 

She can hear Karen shift from behind the phone. _"Is something wrong?"_

This makes Amy stop. She's now not sure if explaining it to her mother-in-law would be great, but on the other hand, she could be holding some really valuable information that she doesn't even know is important. 

She's broken back into reality when Karen calls her name through the phone again.

Amy nods. "Yeah, wait no, nothing's wrong. I'm just - we believe Roger is involved with this and is holding Jake somewhere, but I need to know if something's been off with him recently. The doctor said Jake's father took him out of the hospital yesterday morning, and he gave a fake address to where he was staying."

Karen pauses for a moment, the silence so clear you could hear crickets from miles away. But as quickly as the silence envelopes the call it's broken like a rock against a window. _"That's not possible, Roger's been here. He hasn't left the house in days."_

Amy furrows her eyebrows, looking up from the nick-nacks still sat on the top of her husband's desk to Rosa and Terry stood at her side. "Then who is the person pretending to be Jake's dad?"


	7. Seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry if there are any mistakes, I was getting distracted whilst proofreading it but I managed to fix all the ones I remembered seeing. 
> 
> Enjoy chapter seven!

_One Year Later_

He's woken up to the force of a pillow hitting him over the face, the soft material harshly hitting his nose and knocking him awake. 

He sits up groggily and stares at Antonio standing at the side of the bed. "What do you want?" He asks, his voice dry and hoarse.

Antonio throws his hands up. "Dad told me to wake you up cause he needs to speak to us, urgently." 

Dustin groans as he throws the comforter off of himself before stepping on to the cold wooden floor and following his brother down the stairs into the kitchen. 

Stood in the middle of the room was Curtis, staring blankly to the men who stood in front of him. 

"What's going on?" Dustin asks, knitting his eyebrows together.

Curtis replies immediately, not letting the early morning silence of the room take over. "We're being evicted again."

Antonio and Dustin both groan to themselves before Antonio speaks up. "Seriously? Again?" He asks.

Dustin steps forward subtly, "C'mon, dad, this is the third time in the last year we've had to move."

Curtis tosses his hands up in the air, staring at the two men. "Well I'm sorry I've still got my two adult sons living in the house with me and I'm still struggling to make ends meet."

Dustin sighs. "I've talked about the possibility of me moving out dozens of times recently, but every time I do you freak out and convince me to stay."

Antonio nods along. "And, it wouldn't be that big of a problem if you let me and Dustin go out and work rather than mope around the house all day."

Curtis shakes his head. "You two boys work with me, I've told you that. Any other job is too dangerous."

"That's the thing, dad, I don't fully understand what your job is exactly." Dustin sighs, screwing his face up a little.

"We're getting off-topic," Curtis pauses for a moment before shaking his head, "We need to be out the house by six, so hurry and pack your stuff."

Dustin looks down at his watch he must have forgotten to take off the night before. "That's like fourteen hours from now."

"Six this morning, dumbass." Curtis sighs, staring at Dustin blankly.

Before they go back upstairs, Dustin stops again and furrows his eyebrows. "Where are we going this time?" He asks.

"Minnesota." Curtis replies as he goes toward the living room.

Dustin sighs again. "C'mon it's January, do we seriously need to go to another place freezing cold? First Pennsylvania, then Ohio, then Michigan, now Minnesota. What's next? Illinois, or Chicago?"

Antonio speaks up quickly before Curtis can crack in. "Chicago's in Illinois."

Dustin widens his eyes, raising his eyebrows. "It is?" He asks, looking to both Antonio and Curtis as they nod to him. He hums. "I didn't know that."

Curtis just stares to him blankly for a moment before putting his hand up to his head, rolling his eyes slightly. "Just go and pack."

Two hours later, they were on the road again, Antonio and Curtis sat up front and Dustin sat in the back like normal. After ten minutes of driving in silence, Curtis speaks up, keeping his eyes on the road but turning his head slightly to the back of the van. "You spent the first seven years of your life in Minnesota, Dustin, maybe something will spark for you?" 

Dustin sits back a little before sighing. "You've said that about quite a lot recently, dad but nothing has come back to me."

Over the course of the past year, Curtis had taken them all over the place in the different states they had lived in previously before the accident. Every time, both Antonio and Curtis swears that something will come back to him, but still, the last thing Dustin remembers is still 1999, now twenty-two years ago. Nothing has come back to him. 

"I don't know, maybe we're just hitting the wrong places." Dustin says, sitting back forward again and poking his head through the two seats.

Curtis pushes Dustin's head back through the gap before staring at a car that went past them. "Don't do that," he eventually says as the car disappears, "You know it distracts me."

The van goes into silence again for a brief moment before Dustin speaks up, sitting forward again despite his father's words. "How come I can't sit in the front."

Antonio smiles widely. "Because I called shotgun." 

"Oh c'mon there must be an exception when you always ride up in the front."

Curtis shakes his head. "Shotgun is shotgun," he replies before his voice turns sour as he turns his attention to Dustin, "Now sit back and be quiet."

Dustin sighs quietly to himself as he puts his head up against the seat, closing his eyes and drifting off. 

* * *

He wakes up again to Antonio poking his shoulder. He groans into the seat and turns away before he hears his brother says his name on repeat until he grudgingly opens his eyes. 

"Haven't you heard of not waking people up, what is wrong with you? That's the second time today." Dustin huffs, staring at his brother blankly.

Antonio points out the front window. "Look. Chicago, Illinois." 

Dustin shakes his head subtly as he continues to glare at the man in the front seat. "Is that seriously the whole reason you woke me up, just so you can rub it in my face that I thought Chicago was a state?" 

Antonio nods with a smug smile on his face. "Uh-huh." He hums.

"You're a dick, you're gonna pay for that." Dustin replies as a mumble under his breath as he turns his head to the side again to try and go back to sleep. 

Just as he's drifting off, he hears Curtis speak up from the front which snaps his attention back again. 

"Why'd you wake him up? He was finally quiet." The older man asks, leaning in slightly to the passenger side and attempting to whisper.

Antonio shrugs. "He was gonna wake up soon anyway, so what?" 

"You had to do it in the middle of a busy city though, didn't you?" Curtis asks before Dustin can see him sit back in the seat properly again in the corner of his eye. 

Dustin shrugs and deepens his head into the seat a little further and drifting off again. 

He doesn't know what the time is when he wakes up, but as he opens his eyes he sees the what was the once bright sky what felt like moments ago was no the pink-orange dusk as the sun began to set beneath the horizon. 

Dustin sits up and clears his throat, looking around the van and putting his hand up to his neck as he feels the stiffness begin to sink in. 

"What time is it?" He asks, looking out the front window and startling Curtis slightly. 

He takes a moment to respond as he looks to the monitor inside the dashboard. "Almost five, be quiet, your brother's asleep too."

Dustin looks over to see Antonio with his head rested against the passenger side window, fast asleep. He smiles as he thinks of all the ways he can get back to his brother for waking him up twice. 

"How long's left of the drive?" Dustin asks instead, furrowing his eyebrows as he tries to read the time stamp written in tiny in the bottom corner of the GPS.

Curtis looks down and shrugs. "Like an hour, you've been out the whole time."

"Well apart from the two minutes in which Antonio woke me up in Chicago, yeah the whole drive."

Curtis turns his attention to Dustin quickly before putting his eyes back in the road. "Leave him alone, he's done a lot more than you may think. He's not the jerk that used to pick on you in high school anymore."

Dustin raises his eyebrows. "Really? How so?"

Curtis shrugs. "Well for starters he was the only one you would talk to for like the first six months after your wife died and he was so worried when we got the call saying you had been in an accident and that you almost died yourself. He's always been there for you."

He nods slowly. "I didn't realize, I guess I only really remember him as a pain in my ass."

"Well he's more than that, trust me."

* * *

The new place was a lot more cramped than any other of the places they had lived in the past year. When they arrived, Dustin went straight upstairs with his stuff, leaving Antonio and Curtis to talk in the kitchen. 

"How much longer do we need to keep this act going?" Antonio asks in a whisper.

Curtis shrugs it off. "Not that much longer, I promise." 

Antonio sighs quietly. "Do you have some sort of plan?"

"As a matter of fact, I do," Curtis replies, "I've got a buddy coming over in a few days to take him on a trip to New York for the weekend. This guy will drug him up, take him to Central Park and kill him for the eyes of the kids' first thing Sunday morning."

Antonio stops for a moment before furrowing his eyebrows. "Isn't that a little wrong? Having all those kids see something like that."

"Isn't it all wrong? It's technically classed as murder if you didn't know." Curtis replies sarcastically, staring at the younger man blankly.

A silent beat passes before Antonio speaks up. "At least it's will be over, I hate having to lie to him."

"Why does it bother you so much?" Curtis asks, "The guy's a jerk." 

Antonio pauses before shrugging. "I don't know, having to pretend to be his brother for a year, I've kinda grown on the guy." 

"I'm gonna murder you too in a moment." Curtis sighs, rolling his eyes and moving to go through to the living room before stopping abruptly.

"Who are you murdering?" Dustin asks as he appears in the kitchen.

Curtis and Antonio freeze simultaneously, their eyes subtly wide to in Dustin's direction. 

Dustin stares at his dad and brother with a confused look. "What are you two doing?" He asks, knitting his eyebrows together.

Antonio shrugs. "I don't know what you're talking about, we're doing nothing."

"Right..." Dustin responds, walking to the sink but keeping one eye on the two of them. 

Curtis quickly changes the subject, turning around to in the direction of Dustin and smiling widely to him. "Anyway, an old buddy of yours is coming over on Thursday and he's taking you on a trip to New York for the weekend, how cool is that?"

Dustin sighs. "Oh come on haven't we done enough traveling this week already, can't he postpone the trip for at least another week, I'm exhausted."

"You slept for eleven out of the twelve hours we were driving for today." Antonio quickly responds, cutting in in front of his father. 

Curtis suddenly turns his head to Antonio and gives him a look that makes the man roll his eyes and walk out of the kitchen before he looks back to Dustin with a saddened smile. "No you can't, the hotel is already booked and it's non-refundable." 

Dustin looks to the floor before nodding. "Alright, but are you and Antonio coming as well?" He asks.

Curtis shakes his head. "No, it's just you and your friend, it will be great fun." He says before beginning to walk out of the kitchen. 

Dustin speaks up. "Wait, will I remember him?" He wonders but his dad is out of the room before he can finish his sentence. 

Dustin fills the empty glass he had left on the counter when Curtis had begun to speak to him with water and mumbles to himself as he leaves the room and goes upstairs. "Never mind."


	8. Eight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this one isn't edited, I tried my best but my laptop keeps playing up it's not working :)
> 
> Enjoy chapter eight!

The apartment was quiet. The shrill of her alarm woke her up instantly - not that she was really asleep anyway. She switched the obnoxious, loud ring and rolled over, her hand hitting the cold and empty side of the bed. 

She stares to the pillow on the opposite side of the bed for a moment before rolling back over, putting her feet against the carpet and going over to the closet. She pulled out one of Jake's shirts that she owned herself at this point and slipped her arms through, the shirt a size too big over her.

Shuffling out to the kitchen, she switches on the coffee machine and watches at the hot liquid fill the mug she placed under the nozzle - the noise from the machine filling the silence of the apartment abruptly too. 

The morning goes slowly, Amy drinks her coffee in silence whilst watching the news before getting in the shower and getting into her sergeant's uniform. 

With her hand on the front door, she debated whether to actually go in. The squad would understand if she didn't but she's already had her monthly off-days and it's only the second week of the month. She hesitates as she turns the door handle, looking around the silent apartment before locking eyes with the picture hanging over the bookcase in the dining room. 

The picture that Charles took on their wedding night. It's not the best picture in the world, it's a little blurry when standing close to it but when standing an apartments distance from the picture, you can see the bright smile beaming from Jake's face as he looked to his side, where Amy was stood - them both dressed up smartly and Amy's white dress reflecting the minor details and patterns off clear for the camera. 

She smiles at herself looking at the picture, takes her hand off the handle and goes closer to the picture. 

It's been almost a year since she last saw his smile. 

It will be exactly a year tomorrow. 

She feels the tears begin to burn up in her eyes as she thinks about it, the fact that tomorrow is the one year anniversary to when Jake went missing. When he vanished into thin air. 

They worked the case for months, but every lead turned up dead. They ruled out Jake's dad easily - he hadn't left the house the time Jake vanished. They then got the doctors to describe the man acting as his father to a sketch artist and two months after the drawing went live, they got a tip that someone looking very similar to the drawing was living out of this old barn in Pennsylvania but when they got there, the barn was empty. Every time they got close to this guy, he slipped from under their noses and got away again. 

So for eight months following the disappearance of Jake they were lead on a wild goose chase around the states - Pennsylvania, Ohio, someone even spotted the man walking around the city centre in Indiana, but all of them went dead. Eventually, it got too costly to travel from state to state looking for this guy that the commissioner told them to give the case up because they were costing the NYPD too much money. 

Amy had rolled her eyes to the commissioner's words and continued worked from the precinct in her off hours, practically spending all her time at the precinct. She couldn't go back home. 

But they never got another tip saying someone had seen the man they were looking for. Curtis Garner, that was the name he had given the doctors in the hospital but there were no social media posts or accounts by that name - none that fit the description of the man they were after anyway. 

So after another month, much to the reluctance and dismay of Amy, the commissioner labelled the case a cold case and Jake was labelled officially deceased.

And now with the one year anniversary coming up tomorrow, the past week had been a little rough on her. 

She had spent the week either at home looking through old photos and videos on her phone or on Facebook or working at the precinct trying to distract herself from the day that was very quickly approaching. 

As she goes to the bedroom to change, she first agrees to call the precinct to say she wasn't going in today. But before she can dial the number, she gets an incoming call first from Terry.

She answers it and sighs through the phone. "I'm sorry Terry but I can't come in today."

Terry speaks up immediately, the sound of him shaking his head is audible through the speaker. _"No, you really might want to."_

"I know I've used up my sick days for the month but I really can't - I can't face to be there today."

 _"Amy listen to me, I really think it's best for you to come in today and speak to the person who's just walked in,"_ Terry replies before pausing a moment, making Amy listen in, _"It's Jake."_


	9. Nine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Halfway there! Thank you so much to everyone who has stuck with me through this story, you all are so amazing! <333
> 
> Enjoy chapter nine!

Dustin stares around the hotel room, unable to fall back asleep. The snoring from the man sleeping on the other side of the room echoes off the tight, small walls - ringing out to the empty space - making the task almost impossible. 

He sighs to himself as he sits up, his eyes adjusted to the dark as he focuses on the small desk in the corner before looking to the stranger fast asleep in the bed beside him. His dad said it was an old friend of his, that Dustin had known him his whole life but like most of the things Curtis has said he would remember, the man that rode drove him to New York was a complete stranger to him.

After a moment he steps out of bed and reaches for his phone sitting on the bedside table. The light from it blinds him for a moment before he can read the time - 7:03 am. He widens his eyes as he looks out the gaps from the blinds. There are so many cars passing outside but it's dark out - pitch black out. It was so much more different from all the places he's been since the accident (he doesn't remember the places before it) and you'd be lucky to see a car pass by this early in the morning from where they lived. 

Without waking the other man in the room, Dustin slowly changes and throws a jacket on before leaving a note of the desk saying he was just going out for a walk around outside hoping it might make him fall asleep again. He would rip the note up if he got back before the man woke up, it was just so he knew where he had gone in case he woke up before he was back. 

Throwing his phone and wallet in his jacket pocket as he leaves the hotel room, he closes the door behind him quietly before going inside the elevator and pressing the button for the lobby. 

He doesn't know how far he walks from the hotel but by the time he checks his phone again, it's almost nine. 

At this time it's light out but there are cars still passing by him on the road - just not as many as there was earlier this morning. There are a few more people walking down the street and he sees why people from New York are described as "crazy" because he's had two or three people passing him looking to him as though they recognize his face from somewhere but they can't place it. 

He's got the same feeling right now. It's like he knows the street he's walking on but he can't think of where from. He knows all the turns and he swears he recognizes some of the food carts on the edge of the path but he has no idea where from. He knows he's never been to New York before. He swears he's never been to New York before. 

But yet he can't rid the feeling that maybe he has. 

He looks down at his hand as he sees a light pop up on his phone as a text alert from the guy back in the hotel.

_**where r u??** _

Dustin sighs and replies back. This guy had been so pushy during the two days they had been in the city. He was told by Curtis that it was a trip to sightsee but he hadn't really been out of the hotel room, the guy hadn't let him - he refused to learn the guy's name as he knows if he's anything like the other people he sees his dad hang around with he'll see him once and then never see him again.

_**I just went out for a walk, I left a note on the table. Don't know when I'll be back, New York is awesome!** _

Once he pressed send he reads the text over to himself before drawing his eyebrows closer together. Since when has he texted correctly with punctuation? He swears he used to be awful at it.

It doesn't take long before he gets another one back from this guy. _**r u crazy?? ur dad will have my head off if** **somethin** **happens 2 u come back now**_

Dustin just rolls his eyes and switches his phone on silent before putting it back in his pocket before carrying on down the street. 

For the next few minutes, he ignores the vibrations from his pocket, shaking them off every time, but eventually he gives in and checks his phone one last time. 

He's bombarded by messages from this guy practically begging him to come back to the hotel room. He texts back a brief _**omw** **be 30 mins** _and turns off the vibration and throwing his phone back into his pocket in a huff. 

_So much for sightseeing_ , he thinks to himself. Their plane leaves back for Minnesota tomorrow morning and he bets he's gonna spend the rest of the day in that hotel room. 

He walks back to the hotel in the huff and about ten minutes into the walk he hears something from an alley a few steps ahead. It's as if an instinct kicks in and he goes around the corner to see this guy attacking this woman, stealing things from her bag. He frightens the man off and the mugger runs, dropping the now empty purse on the floor and taking everything else with him. 

Dustin follows his out of the alley but loses him in the open, looking down the road as a car skids off round the corner. He curses to himself and goes back to the woman in the alley. 

"Sorry, they got away." He sighs. 

She shakes her head. "It's fine, they didn't take the bag, that's all I care about."

He furrows his eyebrows but chooses not to question it. Before he can speak up, she cuts him off. 

"That was impressive, are you police or something?" She asks. 

Dustin laughs slightly. "Oh no, just instinct I guess," he replies, the woman nodding along, "Did you know that guy?" He asks.

She shakes her head. "No, I didn't, he just came out of nowhere."

"I got a pretty good look on the guy, I can report it if you want, get your stuff back."

The woman smiles before shaking her head. "You don't need to do that."

He smiles back in return. "No, no I don't care. I think I saw a station at the end of the block. Pretty stupid place to mug someone in my opinion," he jokes, getting a stuttered laugh from her, "I'm Dustin." He greets with a smile as he extends his hand out. 

She pauses for a moment before giving him a shake back. "Claire."

Dustin smiles a little wider. "Well it's very nice to meet you, Claire, and I'll talk to the cops, hopefully get your stuff back."

"Should I give you my number?" She asks quickly and gaining a raised eyebrows from Dustin, "You know, just in case they find the guy."

He pauses for a moment before nodding. "Yeah sure, but I'll have to give them my contact too, I'm heading home tomorrow."

She widens her eyes. "Oh, you're a tourist, where are you from?"

"Minnesota." Dustin replies. 

Claire then brings her eyebrows together. "Are you sure? I swear I've seen you around here before." She asks, handing him a slip of paper.

Dustin chuckles, putting his hand in his pocket. "You know a lot of people have been giving me a look like that all morning but I'm sure I've never been here before."

"Alright familiar face, I've gotta go to work, but you've gotta call me if you hear anything."

He nods. "I will, don't worry about it."

She waves goodbye to him before disappearing.

Dustin stays put for a moment before checking his phone again and sighing to see a few more messages from that guy. He doesn't bother responding and just puts his phone back in his pocket and walks out from the alley and toward the end of the block to the station. 

He goes inside and to the front desk, smiling to the person behind it. 

"I'm here to report something." He says, leaning against the desk. 

The person behind it, who looked no older than eighteen and had a badge on saying **VOLUNTEER** in bold, kept their attention solely on their phone. They slid across a sticker, mumbling for him to wear it before pointing to the elevator. "Fourth floor, it's detectives up there." They say before sighing audibly to themselves.

Dustin hesitates for a moment before taking the sticker and placing it on his jacket before going over the elevator and calling it down and pushing the button for the fourth floor. 

When it reaches its destination, Dustin steps off and stands in front of it as the doors close behind him. He's hit in the face with this wave of thought as his mind raced at the sight in front of him. 

He knows this from somewhere. It's hazy but he knows he's not making this up. He doesn't know where from but the layout of this floor sparked something - he just can't put his finger on what. 

Just then he's broken from his trance as a tall, muscular man stops in front of him, just in front of the gate. 

"Jake?" The tall man mumbles just loud enough that one of the other detectives from one of the many desks turns around in his chair faster than anything he had ever seen before. 

Dustin hesitates for a moment before looking over his shoulder for the man this cop was looking for, but there's no one behind him. He puts his finger against his chest as he leans forward a little. "Are you talking to me?"


	10. Ten

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry a bit of a shorter chapter, I promise the next one is longer.
> 
> Also, I just wish all of you the best at the moment with the whole coronavirus cover all over the news, I hope you all stay safe and well <333
> 
> Enjoy chapter ten!

Amy bursts into the bullpen and looks to Terry, who was standing there waiting for her. "What the hell do you mean it's Jake?" She asks.

The lieutenant points over to Rosa's desk were, sure enough, Jake was standing there talking to the female detective. "He wandered in about fifteen minutes ago but he hasn't talked to any of us, just kinda stared around," he replied before looking to the sergeant, "Are you okay?" He asks.

She nods slowly. "I don't know whether to be relieved or mad." She responds, staring in the direction of her missing husband. 

"Do you want to take a timeout for a minute? Charles did." Terry questions, pointing toward the break room. 

The sergeant shakes her head. "I'm gonna be mad first, then relieved." She says before going over to her friend's desk. 

She doesn't hesitate and punches Jake in the arm as hard as she could. "What the hell?!"

He steps back, looking to the sergeant with confusion and masses amount of hurt. "Why did you do that? What did I do to you?" He asks quickly, holding his hand up to his arm in the spot that she punched him. 

"What did you do?" She asks, feeling her blood boil at the stupid question, "I'll tell you what you did, you disappeared for a year, I was worried sick about you! Where the hell did you go?"

Jake stutters for a moment. "I have no idea what you're talking about." 

Amy furrows her eyebrows together before forcefully laughing. "Okay, very funny Jake, but I'm really not in the mood for jokes, so please just say where you disappeared off to."

He looks confused for a moment before shaking his head a little. "I don't know why you keep calling me Jake, that's not my name."

The sergeant steps back a little, her mind racing. "Alright I get it, funny man, coming back with rehearsed ones but I really don't wanna hear them."

Jake looks to the three officers surrounding him with his eyebrows knitted together. "Look my memory hasn't come back yet, do you know me from somewhere? Do I know you from somewhere?" He asks. 

Terry steps in as Amy begins to fall backward. "Your memory hasn't come back... what do you mean by that?" 

Jake looks to the lieutenant hesitantly. "I was in an accident like almost a year ago, I lost my memory. I still haven't gotten it back yet."

Amy excuses herself quietly before walking off and into the break room. 

Jake watches as she walks away but can't ask anything as Terry speaks up before he can. 

"She's had a really rough week, excuse her for what she did." The lieutenant says.

Jake shakes his head, putting his hand out. "It's fine, I completely understand."

* * *

After a few minutes, Terry walks into the break room following Amy. When he enters the room, he ushers Charles out and shuts the door behind the detective and goes over and sits beside Amy on the couch. 

She doesn't lift her head out of her hands and she stays in her hunched over position. Looking down to the ground, she speaks up when she feels the lieutenant's weight against the couch next to her. "He doesn't remember any of this," she sighs before pausing to look up to the lieutenant, "He doesn't remember us." 

Terry puts his hand on Amy's back. "But he will, we've got him back now, we know he's okay. He's alive and we're gonna be able to help him get his memory back."

"He doesn't even remember his own name, Terry, it's a lost cause."

The lieutenant sits back and gives Amy a disapproving look. "That's not the same Amy that eight months ago was making the entire precinct travel all over the place looking for Jake. We're gonna help him and we're gonna get his memory back." 

They talk for a few more minutes before they both exit back into the bullpen. As Amy looks over to the opposite side she finds that neither Jake or Rosa were where they were just minutes before. 

Just then the elevator doors ding open and Rosa walks back on to the floor, looking both extremely pissed off and very out of breath. 

"Where's Jake?" Amy asks, following the detective to her desk. 

Rosa slams down on the wood before glaring up to the sergeant and lieutenant. "He ran out."

The sergeant's eyes go wide. "What? How?"

The detective huffs, sitting in the chair. "His phone went and suddenly he was in the elevator leaving. I tried chasing after him and beating him down there by taking the stairs but he had left by the time I even reached the first floor."

"Did he say where he was going?" Amy questions. 

Rosa pauses for a minute. "No, he just said he had to go."


	11. Eleven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I said in chapter 8 of 'the squad' i am not fluent in Spanish, nor do I really speak it, so the Spanish spoken in this chapter has come out of translate. I hope it means what I wanted it to mean. 
> 
> Enjoy chapter eleven!

Dustin had been home less than two minutes and somehow Curtis was already pissed off with him. In fact, the moment he had walked through the door, Curtis seemed to be mad at him - and not just the gentle kind of mad, like the steam-coming-out-of-ears mad with him. 

He had let his father storm off into the kitchen as he stayed put in the living room. He paces around for a moment before Antonio comes down the stairs and widens his eyes to him. 

"Dustin, hi, what are you doing back so soon?" Antonio asks, small pauses in between each word as he looks around the room cautiously. 

Dustin furrows his eyebrows slightly. "Dad got anxious about me being out in the city so he booked us an earlier flight back."

Antonio nods and goes through to the kitchen, leaving his brother behind. He grabs the attention of Curtis as he enters the room and he grits through his teeth. "What the hell? You said he was gonna be killed in New York." He asks, keeping his voice to the quietest it could go so it wouldn't be overheard in the next room. 

Curtis shrugs before nodding his head. "Yeah he was supposed to be but the guy fucked up, let him get out and he was spotted by several people."

Antonio pauses before he sighs. "I was looking forward to this all being over, this is killing me."

"Well you don't have to let it for much longer, I'm gonna do it myself tomorrow and we'll leave him here and we'll get on the move again, much further though this time. I'm thinking Canada or Mexico, take your pick." 

There's a pause before Antonio speaks up again. "You can go wherever sounds better to you, just please get this over with." 

Curtis nods and mumbles under his breath before going through to the living room, stopping Dustin mid-pace around the room. "Can I speak to you?"

Dustin nods before folding his arms over his chest. "Sure, if you tell me why you're so mad at me first."

"The reason as to why I'm mad is not to of any importance to you right now," Curtis responds but doesn't allow Dustin any time to continue on this conversation, "Why did you wander out of the hotel room without Martin?"

Martin - so that was his name, Dustin thinks to himself before mentally shrugging his shoulders - he isn't gonna remember that. He widens his eyes a little. "I didn't know that was such a problem, I couldn't sleep so I went out." 

Curtis exhales sharply. "New York is a huge, dangerous city I told you that before you left but you ignored me and left the hotel room on your own in the middle of the night."

"It was seven am, basically all the crime at that point was gone, I only got caught up with one mugging and I reported it to the cops straight after." Dustin reasons, raising his voice slightly to his father. 

Both Curtis and Antonio - who had joined the room mid-conversation - stared to him with wide eyes for a moment. After a beat, Curtis speaks up, his voice low. "You did what?" He asks in a creepily calm manner.

Dustin hesitates for a moment, folding in on himself slightly before Curtis' dagger-like stare snaps the answer out of him. "This woman got mugged and I chased the guy off but I reported it to the cops because the guy took this woman's stuff I was just being a decent person ad helping her."

The steam practically flies from his father's ears. "¡idiota! ¿Por qué harías una cosa tan estúpida?"

"I thought I was doing the right thing." Dustin replies. 

Curtis sighs loudly. "Si bueno tu brillante idea pudo haber sido un gran error," he says before he looks around the room to Antonio before locking his eyes back with Dustin. "Sube las escaleras."

He stares to his father for a moment before Curtis repeats himself loudly, making Dustin quickly move upstairs, slamming his bedroom door behind him. 

As he walks around his bedroom, Curtis' words ring throughout his mind. How might it be a great mistake? There has to be something he's hiding, Dustin thinks as he sits on the bed, the sound of the mattress spring folding in on themselves echoing throughout the room. 

Then Curtis' classic insult sticks to the inside of his mind, a picture attached to it - a blurry, unfamiliar image. It's not the first time Curtis has called him or Antonio an 'idiota' but it is the first time something has stuck with it. 

A woman's voice begins in his head but before it can go too deep he shakes it off, being brung back to reality as the door opens and Antonio walks in. 

"What do you want?" Dustin asks, turning his head over his shoulder to look to his brother. 

Antonio pauses before folding his arms over his chest. "Look, dads pissed okay? He's just found out the guy he hired to do something for him didn't do it, and I'm pretty pissed about it too, so don't go yelling at him about something that you knew from the start was stupid."

Dustin scoffs, standing up and placing his hands on his hips. "How on earth was that stupid? All I did was talk to the cops, how bad is that?" 

"You know dad doesn't like cops." Antonio replies.

"But why? What did dad do that made him hate the cops so much?" 

His brother shakes his head. "It's a long story." 

Dustin sighs audibly. "It's like you guys are hiding something from me."

There's a silent beat before Antonio furrows his eyebrows together. "I don't know what you're talking about, bro."

"Oh come one like I don't notice all your mini-secret chats between the two of you that stop immediately when I enter the room or even come in the line of sight of either one of you; or the constant moving about from state to state because dad keeps forgetting to pay the bills but refuses to let us work and bring in money to help pitch in - if I didn't know any better I would think dad is on the run from someone, that's why we keep moving from state to state like he's on the run from the cops."

He can see his brother swallow before he responds. "Dustin, you're just acting crazy."

And just then the image he tried to push away become clearer, the woman's voice in the back of his head, the image unfolding behind it. 

_"Ese idiota." The woman says_ (she doesn't have a face, he notes, but he recognizes the voice) _._

 _A second woman can then be heard, this time the person saying it is sat right beside him. Again, this person doesn't have a face, he can't remember it, but he knows the voice immediately. "Mom, don't be harsh."_ It was the woman from the precinct in New York. The one that hit him out of nowhere.

 _"What? I didn't say anything." The older woman can be heard, the stronger Cuban accent of the two standing out._ He doesn't know any Cuban people, he swears.

Snapping of fingers inches from his face brings him back to the present, shaking his head and zoning back. 

"What was that?" Antonio asks, still slightly snapping his fingers - just not as close to his face anymore.

Dustin shrugs slightly. "I don't know, some kind of flashback or something. I don't remember the people in it though." 

A beat passes before Antonio questions something, his voice sounding very hesitant. "Was it a memory?" He wonders.

"I'm not sure, it seemed like one but I don't know the faces of the people in it, I only know the voices." Dustin sighs.

Curtis' voice can be heard belting from downstairs. "Antonio! Get your ass down here now!"

His brother doesn't spare a minute before leaving his room and shutting the door behind him. 

Dustin sighs and sits back in the bed, allowing himself to lay back against the mattress, thinking about the image as it played over and over in his head. 

Then the sound of Curtis yelling from the ground floor. "Hazlo ahora!" 

Dustin sits up quickly as he gets the feeling he knows he's heard Curtis say that before, sometime in the past. The repetition of Curtis' voice in the back of his head, but it wasn't loud like it usually was. Curtis only spoke Spanish when he was really pissed, but the time he thinks back to he wasn't mad. He had said it quietly, in a closed environment. 

Then it hits him like a brick.

 _He hears his own voice first, it quick and to the point. "Wait, why are you telling him to crash the car?!" He asks, before sitting forward in his seat._ He was in a car, he remembers that.

 _Curtis in the seat in front of him just smiles. "You'll see,"_ _he says before facing the driver again._ He knows the face of the driver now. _"Hazlo ahora."_

 _He then squints his eyes, trying to look out the front windscreen to see where they were but the darkness outside restricted his view. Then everything went black. Pitch black, with the increasing pain in his head throbbing._ He can still kind of feel it as he thinks back to it. 

Then the door opens and Antonio walks in quickly looking slightly disheartened. 

Dustin quickly speaks up before anything can be said between the two of them. "It was you," he says, mumbling it loud enough to grasp his brother's attention, "You crashed the car."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You really are going to kill me one of these days.


	12. Twelve

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is short and isn't checked all the way through. I'm fucking stressed right now, I've got 200 questions due for science on Monday and I haven't even scratched that and I've just found out there was English homework that also is due for Monday but I needed to get something from my English teacher first, but it's the weekend now so I can't do that anyway so she's gonna fucking kill me. I'm gonna have a mental breakdown, so enjoy chapter twelve :)

Antonio swallows thickly but pushes it away. He places his hands against his hips and knits his eyebrows close into a frown. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

Dustin takes a small, hesitant step forward. "Don't play dumb with me, you were the one who did it, it wasn't one of my friends."

"That's not true, I can't believe you would assume something as ridiculous as that." Antonio sighs, rolling his eyes a little to avoid eye contact. 

Dustin points to the man in front of him. "You were driving and dad was sat beside you. He told you to do it, he told you to crash the car and you did," he replies, taking another step around the bed closer to Antonio, "You tried to kill me because of what? Why did you crash the car?"

"I didn't want to do it! He told me to, he had been threatening me for weeks, I didn't want to do any of this." Antonio replies before slumping forward and exhaling loudly. 

A silent moment weighs down on the room as Dustin blinks a few times as Antonio's words settle into his mind. He stares at his brother as he looks down to his feet briefly before looking around the room. When Dustin breaks the tense silence that enveloped the room, Antonio brings his attention back up, looking sadly to the smaller man. 

"Any of what?" Dustin asks with his eyebrows together. 

Antonio points around the room. "This. The playing along with his games, it's killing me, all of this is killing me."

There's a brief pause as Dustin folds his arms over his chest. "Have you been lying to me?" He questions, his voice significantly lower than before. 

The taller man swallows the lump in his throat down, avoiding eye contact for a moment before he looks Dustin in the eyes and nods slowly. "Yeah, I'm not your brother," he replies before gazing to the side at the door before back to the shorter man in front of him, "And he's not your dad."

"Why?" Dustin asks, his face scrunching up in confusion, "Why did you do any of this?"

Before he can reply back, Curtis' voice can be heard belting from downstairs again. "Antonio, now!" He shouts before the sound of his footsteps can be heard walking out of the living room and into the kitchen again. 

Antonio sighs and looks to his feet. 

"What does he want?" Dustin questions, looking at the door and bringing the man's attention back up from the floor. 

There's a quiet pause before Antonio speaks up. "He wants you." He replies blatantly. 

Dustin just furrows his eyebrows together and Antonio takes it as that he wants to know more so he continues. 

"He wants to kill you." Antonio clears up. 

"In like the metaphorical sense?" Dustin asks.

The taller man shakes his head. "No, in the sense of if you go down there, you're gonna die."

"Why?" Dustin wonders, the question just rolling off his tongue at this point. 

Antonio just shrugs. "Because the guy didn't do it in New York."

Dustin turns his back and walks over to the other side of the room before putting his hands through his hair as he turns back to face the door. "I don't get it though, it just doesn't make sense."

"Get out." Antonio quickly says, staring at the slightly shorter man blankly. 

With furrowed eyebrows, Dustin looks back up. "What?" He asks, his voice sharp and confused. 

Antonio repeats himself. "Get out," he says, gaining an odd look from Dustin, "Go back to New York before he comes up here instead."

Dustin swallows and steps back toward the man inside the bedroom with him. "Why would I do that?"

"Because if you don't, he will come up here and kill you, simple as," Antonio replies, his face straighter than he had ever seen it before, "Get out and go back to New York, live your life there like this whole thing never happened."

"Why are you helping me?" Dustin questions. 

Antonio shrugs subtly. "I'm setting things right, as right as they can be anyway. You go and he can kill me instead."

There's a pause. "I can't let you do that." 

"Well, what do I have to live for anymore anyway? But no matter what's gonna happen, you need to leave this house right now and run, get a cab, take the car, do whatever but you can't stop moving until you get to New York and if you don't leave within the next minute, I'm shoving you out that window myself. Now go."


	13. Thirteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back again and I'm much happier today than I was yesterday. I honestly put my laptop down after I had published it and cried for like a good thirty minutes about it (XD) but I'm alright today. I've still got 100 questions to do for my science and my mum's gonna write a note about my English and I'm gonna see my teacher first thing to explain what had happened. 
> 
> Enjoy chapter thirteen!

The events of the past twenty-four hours had been very energy-consuming. After being practically pushed out the window by Antonio the previous afternoon, Dustin had run (well speed-walked) until nightfall, finding himself in a busy part of Minnesota. Before being pushed out of the house, he had been given enough time to get his phone and wallet so he took a cab to the airport and attempted to buy a ticket on the next flight to New York, which hadn't ended well. 

_"Do you have a passport on you?" The lady behind the desk had asked._

_Dustin sighed and looked to the floor. Had he ever had a passport? He slowly shakes his head. "No I don't, but I really need this ticket."_

_The woman shrugs her shoulders. "Without a passport, I'm sorry you can't fly."_

_A beat passes before Dustin leans against the front desk. "What if I told you I am probably going to be chased down by a person who is trying to kill me and that this ticket to New York is my only means of escape."_

_She looks snidely to him. "Then I'd advise you to go see a physiatrist."_

_Dustin chuckles forcefully before running his hands through his hair quickly. "C'mon, please, there must be another way of getting to New York."_

_The woman looks around her surroundings quickly before nodding slightly. "There is a bus leaving here tomorrow morning and will make a bee-line for JFK airport in Queens if you're open for a day on a bus."_

_"I'll take it." Dustin says, already pulling his wallet out from his back pocket._

_Once it had all been processed and he was given his ticket, the lady behind the desk stopped him as he was beginning to walk off. "There is a motel you can stay in for the night across the street."_

_He shakes his head. "No, it's fine thanks."_

_"Then where are you going to stay?" She asks, furrowing her eyebrows into a frown._

_Dustin shrugs. "I guess I'll just have to stay at the airport."_

_The woman doesn't spare a second before stopping him from walking off once more. "You can't do that." She declines._

_"Come and stop me." Dustin replies, before walking away from the desk finally and going off toward the exit for the busses and stationing himself there._

The following morning he boarded the bus to New York and plugged his phone in with his newly-bought charger - after it had died in the middle of the night and he couldn't find a charging point anywhere. 

He rested his head on the glass and looked out the window as the bus took off, leaving the airport loading and taking off on to the main road. He let out a breath of relief as he felt a weight he didn't know was there lift off his shoulders. 

Closing his eyes he saw the image of the two women again, it becoming clearer and clearer as it played over and over in his mind. The younger woman had a face now, it was the cop in the uniform that had punched him a few days previously, he was sure of it. The one with the much stronger Cuban accent though didn't have a face still, but the voice was so familiar to him. 

He can still hear the older woman's words in the back of his head, "Ese idiota." before the whole scene unfolds before his eyes again. 

Closing his eyes tighter and yawning to himself, he allows the image to envelop him as he watches it all happen before him, the sound of the motor acting as a white-noise machine to deepen the sleep he finds himself falling into. 

When he awakes he quickly checks his phone to see what the time was. The sun was higher in the sky and pointing directly in his direction as he attempts to stare at the bright light in his face. 9:21 am - so he had only been asleep for an hour or so. 

The song stuck in his head replays over and over as he feels as though he knows it from a memory in his past, but like normal he can't put his finger to it. He knows this much though: whatever he was doing during the memory he must have looked like an idiot, and that same female cop in uniform was there too - but this time she wasn't in her uniform, just a normal suit of some kind. 

God, this was killing him sitting here. The song still repeating on in his head as he thinks as to where on earth had he heard that in the past year before thinking about the fact its another twenty hours or so until he gets remotely close to New York. 

_'This is gonna be awful.'_ He thinks to himself with an expelled huff as he puts his head against the window again.


	14. Fourteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back at it again with chapter fourteen! Please keep your opinions of the story rolling in, especially now that Jake ("Dustin") is back in New York - oops, spoiler alert for this chapter, but you all must have known that's where I was going with this - but at this point you guys probably know I love to receive feedback and you guys are amazing. 
> 
> Enjoy the chapter!

The morning had been unbelievably slow. Time looked as though it had stopped and the hands on the clock always seemed to be pointing at the same numbers no matter how long it felt since she had last looked at it. 

The past few days had been like this. The anniversary from when Jake went missing came and went - exactly like he had just a few days ago. For a brief moment she felt as though he had come back home and that she could pick herself back up from the floor but as quickly as he appeared in the first place, Jake was gone again in the time it took for her to have a conversation with the lieutenant. 

So the past few days had dragged. The apartment had been eerily quiet and the precinct was no better. The detective squad, as well as her own squad, were on eggshells around her, seeming to wait until she cracked in front of everyone. 

But she was managing to hold it together - at work anyway. The quiet apartment endures the wrath of her frustration and cries about what had happened earlier that week. There might have even been a few holes in the wall she had somewhat successfully filled from the early search whenever the guy doing this got away. 

If only Jake had left a statement or his number, even a small clue on where the fuck he was living, it would have been so much easier. But no, she's clueless and had practically given up. 

At this point she keeps telling herself that Jake didn't actually walk into the precinct, that after she called Terry to say she wasn't going in that day she had gone back to bed and had fallen asleep and had a dream about that instead - the fact that Jake had wandered into the precinct couldn't possibly be true, it's just not possible.

So as she sat at her desk watching the seconds tick by slowly, she sat back in her chair and sighed. 

She gives a subtle look to her computer before looking straight back to the clock. 

Her long stare to the clock was suddenly broken by one of her officers approaching her desk. They don't hesitate before they speak to her. "Terry's just called from upstairs, says there's someone to speak to you - something about there being someone with intel about your husband." 

Amy's eyes widen as she gets up from her desk and runs up the stairs to the fourth floor - the elevator would take too long. 

When she reaches the bullpen, it feels like deja vu as she sees Jake standing back in the bullpen.

"What the hell?" Amy asks as she walked into the bullpen and approached the man stood staring around. 

Terry interrupts. "He's back!" He cheers hesitatingly whilst walking over to the two people stood in the middle of the bullpen. 

Amy sneers. "Yes thank you, Terry, I can see that," she replies sarcastically whilst keeping her eyes trained on her husband, "But why did he leave, that's what I wanna know." She adds, giving Jake a look she gives perps in an interrogation room. 

He pauses, looking to Amy's face with a questioning gaze before he swallows as she takes a stern step forward. "I had to, he wanted me back." Jake replies.

"Who wanted you back?" Amy asks, her face getting straighter with every ticking second. 

"Dad-" He answers quickly before shaking his head, "-I mean Curtis." 

The sergeant's face falls as she steps back out of her husband's space. It takes her a moment to speak again but when she does her voice is quiet and low. "Curtis Garner?" 

Jake pauses for a moment before nodding his head slowly. "Yeah." 

"That's him, that's the guy that did all of this." Amy sighs, turning around and walking back toward the gate. 

Jake stops her before she could go anywhere else. "He was gonna kill me," he says which makes the sergeant turn on her heels quickly and walk back over, "That's why I came back. Antonio told me to leave and come back to New York."

"Who's Antonio?" Terry asks, beating Amy to the point. 

"My brother, but not my brother," Jake replies quietly, looking to and from the taller man and the woman in uniform, "He was the guy that crashed the car in the accident, but Curtis was the one that told him to crash it."

Amy's eyes soften. "You've got your memory back." She says looking slightly hopeful.

He sighs and shakes his head. "Only a couple things, but the accident is the only thing I remember really clearly, the other two things are really blurry - I'm not sure if I'd even call them memories." 

Terry interrupts. "Wait, so the guy who drove the car during the accident helped you get out?" 

Jake nods. "He said he had to put things right."

"Where did you come from?" Amy asks, grasping Jake's attention back to her. 

He pauses for a moment before responding. "Minnesota, but we were always moving around, he never wanted to stay in one place too long. 

Amy nods, a small smile on her face. "Well, we'll start in Minnesota." 

Terry shakes his head, gaining the sergeant's attention. "You know we can't do that, the commissioner will kill us if we spend any more money." 

The sergeant shrugs. "I don't care, Terry, we need to bring this guy to justice."

A slow moment passes before the lieutenant nods, already making his way back to his desk. "Alright, I'll call him and make sure it's alright." 

Amy smiles widely before going back downstairs to take care of getting someone to cover her desk. 

As she calls the elevator up, she points a finger to Jake. "Don't go anywhere." 

He shakes his head. "I'm not gonna move." 

* * *

Dustin watches as the woman in uniform disappears into the elevator before he looks around the really familiar room. 

His eyes stop on one of the desks just to the side of the desk where Terry had gone off to. It was a little messy but not as bad as he swears to remember it by. 

He walks over to it and runs his hand over the bronze plate encrusted into the side of the desk, his fingers running over the letters printed on it. " **DET. JAKE PERALTA"**. 

There were a couple of toys hiding around the desk with a stack of paperwork sat by the keyboard. The one thing that brought his attention, however, was the picture sat in the frame by the monitor. The picture was a selfie of him and the woman in uniform. They looked really happy, smiling brightly at the camera.

He sits down in the chair and it sinks under his weight before he picks up the frame and admires the picture inside from a new view. 

As he stares to the beaming people from the other side he lets his mind wander, trying to think of all the things that led to the photo. Was it a celebration? We're they just happy? Was it a mix of both? 

He hoped that looking at the background of the picture would help with being able to remember why the photo was taken, but it's blurry and it's not easy to make anything out. 

Just then Terry's voice brings him up from staring at the picture. "Everything was kept the same, apart from the food you left all over the place, that we got rid of." 

Dustin looks up and sighs. "The things I have remembered, well apart from the accident, it's always got the same woman with me, the woman that was just with us."

"Amy. Her name's Amy." Terry cuts in, informing him of her name. 

"Amy," Dustin repeats after the taller man before continuing, "Why is she always in it? Was there something that happened with us before the accident?" He questions.

Terry pauses for a moment before sitting in the chair beside the desk. "I don't know why you're only getting memories back with her, but yeah, there was something between you two - you were married."

Dustin sinks back into the chair. "So everything Curtis told me was a lie, every little thing." 

Terry sighs. "What did he say?" 

It takes a beat of silence between the two men but eventually Dustin responds. "A lot of things. He said my wife died three years ago, didn't say how. I don't know why I believed him." 

"Because you woke up in a hospital room thinking it was 1999 with these two people inside your room telling you they were related to you," Terry says with a straight face before noticing Dustin's wide eyes, "We eventually managed to get a bit of information from the hospital after days of negotiating." 

Dustin puts the picture down back in the desk in the slot he had picked it up from before resting his elbows against the wood. "Every time I think about what Antonio said, about all of it being a lie, I look back and I see how obvious it was. If I really worked here, as a detective, then how stupid must I have become to have missed all that."

Terry shakes his head. "Don't blame yourself, he was clever." He says, putting his hand on the younger man's shoulders. It takes a moment before Dustin looks him in the eye again, which is when Terry speaks up again, "I never asked, what's your name?"

A moment passes through them before Dustin hesitantly replies. "Jake, my name's Jake." 

Terry smiles to the man sat beside him but before he can speak, the elevator doors ding open as Amy walks off them again. 

"Alright, I got someone to cover my desk, what did the commissioner say?" She asks as she got closer to the two men. 

They both stand from the chairs and stand with Amy before Terry shakes his head. "He said no, we've already spent too much before. I tried pushing on him, Amy, but he really wasn't having it."

Amy sighs. "So what are we supposed to do? Let him get away?" 

Terry puts his hand up in his defense. "I called the Minnesota police and said to put an eye out for Curtis, he'll get turned in even if he tries to flee Minnesota anyway." 

"What I am meant to do now though? I got someone to cover me because I thought we'd be going Minnesota." Amy questions. 

The taller man speaks up. "Why don't you take Jake and find somewhere he might remember, get a head start on it?"

Amy hesitates for a moment before both her and him nod simultaneously. "Okay, yeah, sure."


	15. Fifteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some Jake and Amy for you because I know it's needed. 
> 
> Enjoy chapter fifteen!

The first place Amy decided to take Jake was their apartment - it seemed the most logical and Sal's had unpredictable hours at the moment. 

She offered to give him a tour of the place but he shook his head before he walked around the apartment as though he knew it (which he does, in a way). 

Amy goes to the kitchen as Jake wanders around the living and dining room. 

They talk for a while between the hole in the wall, Amy asking about what had been going on the past year and what seeing all the cities had been like.

"When we were out searching and everything, we were being sent all over the place to where people had spotted Curtis but we never got to stay long enough to look around,"

Amy says, looking through the fridge for something she knew Jake might like, "So what were all the places like?" She asks.

Jake drags his attention from the decoration on the wall and shrugs his shoulders slightly. "They were alright, but I had to stay inside mostly, I wasn't really allowed out into the big places." He sighs.

That's when Jake suddenly breaks a small silence that had hit between them as Amy leaves the kitchen, offering him a bag of Cheetos she had found on the counter - as the fridge had turned up empty, apparently she had been meaning to buy some groceries. 

Jake turns from one of the pictures hanging in the wall, the one above the bookshelf from their wedding day that Charles had taken. "So we're were married then, what was that like?" He asks, furrowing his eyebrows.

Amy almost drops the bag of Cheetos on the floor as he asks the question but instead, she puts them down on the dining table and looks up to the picture. She hesitates for a moment before smiling subtly. "It was amazing."

"Was?" Jake questions.

Amy stutters for a moment. "Well, you know, if you don't feel the same way as before, I completely understand." 

A beat of silence suddenly weighs down the apartment as time seems to stop for the sergeant. She feels the heavy lift of the tension sit on her shoulders as her husband looks blankly to her as she feels the words she's dreading to hear are forming in his mouth. 

He opens his mouth to speak, drifting away from the conversation entirely. "How did we meet?" 

Amy's eyes widen slightly before she shakes her head subtly in shock. She swallows thickly before answering his question - one after another.

Jake continues to ask questions about their relationship, leaving no stone unturned. 

After an hour or so Amy had explained Charles' uncomfortable obsession with their relationship from the very first meeting, their first arrest together, their bet and the consequence following it, Jake's confession outside the precinct doors which Amy then added about the fact they got married in the same very place of Jake's confession years previously. 

That's when Amy gets a phone call that interrupts their conversation. 

She reaches into her pocket and shows off the caller ID to Jake. "It's Terry, I've gotta take this." She says before picking up the phone and going over to the other side of the apartment. "Hey, Terry." She greets as she puts the phone against her ear.

 _"Hi Amy, is Jake still with you?"_ The lieutenant asks, panic a little clear through the phone.

Amy smiles to herself, nodding a little. "Yeah, we've just been going through stuff." 

She can hear the man sigh with what sounded like relief. _"Okay, good, I've just got word from the Minnesota Police, they've stormed the place Jake decided to be where he was living but it was empty, no one was inside, are we sure Jake gave us the right place?"_

Amy hesitates and stretches out a noise as she turns around to Jake sat on the couch. She puts her hand over the mic of the phone and furrows her eyebrows. "Jake, what did you say the house looked like again?" 

A moment passes before Jake looks up and responds. "Like an old cottage barn place." He replies.

Amy informs the lieutenant of what her husband had said before waiting a moment as he pauses too quietly on the other end of the line.

What feels like forever later, Terry eventually speaks up again. _"Yeah, that place was empty."_

"Well do you know where they might have gone?" Amy questions.

At this point, Jake had stood up from the couch and approached the sergeant still on the phone to Terry. 

The lieutenant can be heard shaking his head on the other line. _"No, but Curtis's wallet was still in the house, so he couldn't have gone far without it."_

The conversation goes on for a little longer before the two superiors hang up the phone and Amy looks to Jake over her shoulder. 

Before she can speak, Jake beats her to the point. "What was all that about?" He questions, curiosity filled in his voice. 

Amy sighs. "The house was empty, but Curtis' wallet was still in there."

"He couldn't have gotten anywhere then, trust me places are so strict about people sometimes." Jake replies, a smile cracking in his face. 

Amy crosses her arms over her chest. "Is there anywhere he could have gone?" 

Jake shrugs. "He was always sneaking off places, but always made sure I wasn't left alone." 

They both make their way over to the couch again and sit down, Jake turned his head to Amy. 

"So, tell me more about after what happened when I got back from being undercover." Jake says, making Amy smile and sit with her legs crossed on the couch facing her husband. 

And that's how the rest of the night went. They talked about their relationship, the Jimmy Jabs and Amy's disastrous break up with Teddy. 

Before they knew it, the time popped up on her phone telling her she needed to go to bed if she wished to have enough sleep for tomorrow. She's tempted to switch the alert off and continue talking with Jake but in the corner of her eye she sees his stifle back a yawn and she's reminded about the fact he hadn't slept very well for the past few days. 

"Alright, we better turn in otherwise I'm gonna be late tomorrow and you're gonna start complaining." She says, standing from the couch and grabbing the two wine glasses - the alcohol had been brought out about an hour ago and they had each had roughly two glasses - from the coffee table and taking them through to the kitchen. 

"The guest room's all set up, it's hasn't been used in a while if that's where you wanna stay," Amy says as she stood in front of the main bedroom door, "Or there's this bed, if you would prefer."

Jake shakes his head. "I wouldn't wanna impose, the couch is fine."

The sergeant quickly shakes her head. "No, not a chance, that wasn't one of the options and you're not twenty-three anymore, you will really regret it if you sleep on the couch." 

He nods. "Then yeah, the guest bedroom is fine." 

Amy smiles. "Alright then, goodnight Jake." 

"Goodnight." He says, smiling back and watching her as she closed the master bedroom door behind her. 

Amy changes from her clothes to pajamas and climbs into bed, grabbing the crossword as she did. 

Before she begins however, she remembers the fact that she still needed to take her contacts out, so she quietly moves out of her bedroom and through to the bathroom.

Grabbing her glasses from the cabinet, she sees Jake's sat beside them. As she puts them in, she hears a noise from the room next to the bathroom which makes her jump. 

She quickly goes in there and laughs a little as she sees Jake lifting a lamp off the floor. 

"Sorry, I didn't see it," he says, looking to Amy in the doorway, "It's not broken, it just fell."

She shrugs. "It's fine, but you might need these." Amy says, entering the room and handing him the circular glasses. 

Jake sighs loudly. "These are not mine, I don't wear glasses." 

Amy nods. "Oh yes you do, otherwise you bump into things you can't see in front of you, just try them on." 

He protests loudly before giving in and putting the metal against his nose, immediately seeing the difference. "Yep, I see it now and understand why I kept bumping into things before." 

Amy laughs before noting the nervous twinkle in her husband's eyes, one she had seen many times before. "Are you alright, you look a little nervous." 

Jake nods, smiling slightly. "Yeah, I'm fine." 

Amy gives him a look. "Don't give me the whole thing of pretending your fine, Peralta, you may not remember this but I always get you to cave." 

He doesn't speak for a moment but after a beat he gives in. "I can't stop thinking about Curtis, and about the fact he got away and I guess it's just kinda making me a little scared."

The sergeant's face falls. "What like he's gonna find you?" 

He shakes his head quickly before nodding a little. "Yeah, kinda, like what if he got Antonio to cave and tell him where I was. I just managed to find my old life again, and yeah I guess I'm a little scared." 

"Do you wanna sleep in with me? For tonight?" Amy asks, furrowing her eyebrows. 

Jake hesitates for a moment before shrugging. "I mean yeah I would but I wouldn't wanna do that if it would make you uncomfortable."

Amy shakes her head and smiles widely. "Don't be stupid, of course, it won't make me uncomfortable. It will be nice to have someone there cause that side is always cold now." 

Jake nods. "Yeah, and I know you get cold really easily."

The sergeant nods subtly before her face drops a little. "Wait a minute, I didn't tell you that."

He pauses for a moment as he thinks back to the past evening. When he realizes she didn't he smiles widely. "No you didn't, I remembered that on my own." 

"Look at that, things are coming back already." Amy beams, putting her hands on his shoulders.


	16. Sixteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahh, FINALLY, I've been so excited to post this chapter since like before the story was published. I've been most excited to see what your reaction is to this chapter so please tell me what you think. You guys are amazing! <3333
> 
> Enjoy chapter sixteen!

A week later, things had seemed to go back to normal. Jake had gotten a few things back - just little things like Amy's favourite food and what his password was for the computer back at the precinct (but he was yet to go back there to begin working). 

They hadn't been given another word or info about Curtis and where he was, but they had been promised to be given an update by the end of the week. 

Jake woke up with the bright sun beaming in from behind the ineffective drapes and he buried his head into the pillow further in the hope of being able to go back to sleep but the awkward position his head lay hurt the bridge of his nose so he sat up and looked around the room. 

He went over to the window and opened it a crack to allow the stuffiness of the room to leave before feeling the high gust of wind blow in through the small gap. It may be sunny, but it was windy out there. 

As he looks to the pile of clothes he had taken in from the master bedroom - as he had started sleeping in the guest room after a few nights of staying with Amy - to see that there were no new shirts on the pile, it all being ones he had worn before. He sighs and leaves the spare bedroom, knocking on the master bedroom door to go inside.

Amy was sat at the table in the corner of the room working on something but she looks up nonetheless when he slowly enters the room. 

"Sorry, I'm just grabbing a shirt cause I'm running low." He says as he makes his way over to the closet. 

Amy smiles slightly, glancing over her shoulder. "You don't need to knock, Jake."

He shrugs as he pulls a grey t-shirt from one of the hangers. "I'm just being polite, I didn't want to intrude on you." 

As he goes toward the door, pulling it open again as it must have shut a little as he walked in the room, Amy stops him in his tracks. 

"I'm thinking that maybe for lunch we could go over to Sal's because I've already called and he's said he's open today. Maybe that might get something back for you." 

Jake smiles from the doorway. "Yeah okay, that sounds great." He says before he walks back into the spare room and changes out into the shirt he had grabbed from the master bedroom closet and going back through into the living room. 

* * *

An hour or so later, Jake and Amy were talking in the kitchen more about the picture hanging over the bookshelf.

"Why are we in a bar?" Jake questions, furrowing his eyebrows slightly. 

Amy smiles slightly. "Oh that's a funny story, so a few hours before the wedding you got a call from someone saying there was a bomb there, so on our wedding day we're going around trying to find the guy who made the call all the while the venue is off-limits and in the end we can't get back in there because there really was a bomb and Charles put together a ceremony outside the precinct instead."

Jake looks to her with narrowed eyes for a second. "That doesn't really answer the question as to why we're in a bar." 

The sergeant chuckles a little before nodding, looking off to the side. "Oh, you invested in a pyramid scheme and lost a lot of money so it was the only place we could afford. Plus Shaw's is like a big place for all of us, it just felt kinda fitting." 

His eyes grow wide. "I did what?!" He asks, his voice going loud as he sounds shocked.

Amy smiles in his direction. "You only did it so you could get out of Boyle's lookalike Bill's watch during the heist." 

A beat passes before Jake sighs. "I still have so many questions." 

Amy nods and leads him back into the spare room. "I've got something somewhere that might help explain it a little better," she says before stopping and staring at the wide-open window, "Why is this open?" She asks, looking to Jake.

He immediately looks subtly guilty as he jumps to close the window shut. "Sorry that was me, it was really hot in here this morning, I guess I forgot to close it." 

She watches him close the window tightly and lock it in place before grabbing a chair and standing up to reach the top shelf of the high bookcase. She manages to bring down this big box and dusts it off before handing it over to Jake, who puts it down on the desk. 

"I'm not sure if this is gonna help, but there are some pictures and stuff we took after the heists and other events like the Jimmy Jabs." She says, opening the box up.

Jake smiles widely to see the first picture as one of the whole nine-nine, including someone he immediately recognized but he knows he hadn't seen the woman since arriving in New York. 

Amy goes to point the light-brown haired woman out but Jake beats her to the point. 

"That's Gina." He says, pointing out the woman instead.

Amy looks up in disbelief. "You remember her?" She wonders.

Jake looks up to Amy and nods. "We went to school together, we graduated high school together, that was the last thing I could remember when I woke up in the hospital," he

says before giving the picture another double-take, "When was this one taken?" He asks.

Amy looks to the back of the picture to the date written on the back. "That was Cop-Con 2017." 

Jake knits his eyebrows together. "Cop-Con?"

She shakes her head. "That needs its own explanation which might take ages, and I'm getting hungry."

Jake nods and smiles. "Yeah me too." He says before looking back through the box.

He was about to ask another question about one of the pictures before Amy speaks up suddenly.

"Damn it, I've just remembered I haven't checked the mail in a few days, I'll be back in a minute, are you gonna be okay just looking through the pictures?" She wonders. 

Jake nods and smiles before watching her leave the room. When she does he turns his attention back on to the box and begins flicking through the pictures stacked up inside of it. 

One catches his eye which makes him beam. It's a selfie from the precinct, Jake was the one that took it with Amy smiling from her desk in the background, them both goofing off in the picture. He turns to the back of the picture to see "Nov 2015" written in the back. He has to think about it for a moment and when it was in their timeline and he smiles a little wider to realize the fact that it was taken at the very start of their relationship. 

The smile is immediately wiped off his face however when he hears a familiar voice coming from behind him. "Put it down and look at me." 

Jake's breath hitches in the back of his throat as he places the picture down back inside the box and turns around, facing Curtis directly.

The older man gives him a dirty smile. "It's nice to see you again, Dustin." 

Jake doesn't give Curtis a facial expression in return, he just stares to him blankly. "What are you doing here?" 

Curtis shrugs his shoulders, beginning to pull something from out his back pocket. "I'm ending this now and for all." 

"Oh come on, just disappear, no one will know where you've gone and I'll forget about you." Jake reasons, taking a subtle step forward.

Jake steps back as Curtis pulls forward a gun from his back. "Okay, this is gonna end stupidly, Curtis unless you put that down."

The old man shakes his head. "I climbed in through the window I can climb back out."

Jake stops and looks to the window that he had pulled closed a few minutes previously before cursing internally to himself, Curtis beating him to the point of saying it out loud. 

"Oops, maybe you shouldn't have left the window open and you would be just about to die." Curtis says before easing the gun higher up.

Changing the subject, Jake hopes to buy a little more time before Any comes back in. "How did you know I was here?"

Curtis laughs a little. "Oh isn't it obvious, Antonio told me - well after I pushed the gun against his temple and almost pulled the trigger - he caved in like a piece of cardboard." 

"You better not have harmed him after he told you." Jake says, gritting it through his slightly clenched teeth. 

Curtis shakes his head a little. "Oh I shot him anyway but I got the information I needed from him so he wasn't of any use anymore."

Jake steps back a bit and reaches behind his back to try and grab something. Just as he reaches for the box of photos sat on the desk, the front door to the apartment swings open again from the living room. 

"I'm back, there wasn't anything important, but there was no harm in checking." She shouts from the living room.

Curtis turns to the sound of Amy in the apartment again and Jake takes his chance, swinging the box and hitting Curtis with it - the pictures scattering around and landing on the floor. 

For a brief moment, it seems as though Curtis was taken down, but as Jake lifts his gaze up to the empty doorway, he gets gunned down from the elder on the floor. The sound of the bullet leaving the barrel echoing loudly and sharply throughout the apartment, shaking it to its core as Jake falls down too, feeling the pierce below his shoulder, along with the sudden pain to breathe in as he feels the blood already leaving the open wound in his chest.


	17. Seventeen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I AM SO SO SORRY I DIDN'T GET THIS UP LAST NIGHT, yesterday was a very emotional day for me as it was my last day of school. I wasn't expecting it as the last day was supposed to be at the end of May but because of the current outbreak the schools in the uk are closing today and the exams in the summer have been canceled so my headteacher said it was better for us if we left yesterday. I was shocked, upset, happy, overwhelmed and a little confused about what's going to happen next. I went out with my friends after school and then watched a movie with dinner with my parents and the next thing I know its 10pm and I'm on the verge of falling asleep. As this chapter is really long I thought it would be best to update it in the morning rather than stay up until 11 editing it. I really hope you guys understand <33
> 
> Enjoy chapter seventeen! (chapter 18 will be out at the normal-ish time of 7pm GMT today like normal :)) 
> 
> TRIGGER WARNING FOR BLOOD (and lots of it)

Amy rushes into the room the second she heard the loud ring of the bullet coming from the spare room. In there she sees an older man who seems to be passed out by the closet and Jake lying in the middle of the floor, the crimson red spilling out on to the carpet from both on top of him and underneath him. 

She jumps to his aid, putting pressure against the wound whilst kneeling in the puddle of blood growing against the floor as she watches the grey on his shirt begin to dampen with dark red as it sticks to the outline of his chest. 

Jake's raspy voice grasps her attention as it echoes through the walls of the room. "I'm sorry, I did what I had to."

She shakes her head, the tears filling her eyes to the brink as she feels the blood continuing to spill out despite her hands blocking the entry wound shut. "No, don't talk, just stay quiet, you'll be alright," she whispers, leaning down a little to put more force against the wound, "You're gonna be alright." She repeats, wiping her eyes clean with the sleeve of her shirt. 

She shouts out and hears her neighbor calling out from the hallway. "Call an ambulance." She tells the older woman who lived down the hall as they entered the spare room after hearing Amy yell - she hadn't closed the front door in the panic after hearing the shot. 

The middle-aged woman nods frantically, already pulling the phone out from her pocket. 

Jake speaks up quietly again to keep his eyes open as he feels himself drifting off to sleep. "Amy," he gets her attention before having to take a sharp breath in causing a whimper out in pain, "You're gonna be fine, okay, be alright for me."

She shakes her head. "For fuck sake Jake I've only just got you back, I'm not losing you again."

He sighs and with a scratchy, weak and slow voice he speaks up again. "I don't remember any of us though, why bother?" 

"Because I promised you on the day I married you that I would help you through thick and thin, I'm gonna help you get your memories back," Amy says, her voice on the verge of breaking, "I'm not giving up on you Peralta, I'm never going to give up on you." 

He feels his eyes get lower as the want to sleep gets worse every beat of his heart. He's interrupted by Amy hitting him gently on the side of the face. 

"No, stay awake, Jake, don't go to sleep." She says, the desperation filling her voice as she continuously taps against the side of her husband's face. 

He groans into the air. "But I don't want to stay awake." He says, his voice getting weaker with every word.

She can't help but crack a small smile at his stubbornness before shaking her head as her face drops again. "Well you need to, can you promise me you'll stay awake?" She asks, the tears filling her eyes again as she feels him begin to get weaker under her hand. 

He can't speak for a moment before he nods and responds gravelly. "I'll try." 

She nods quickly. "Good, good," she repeats before looking to the woman stood at the doorway watching the scene unfold all the while still on the phone, "What are they saying?"

"There's an ambulance on its way, it will be here in a few minutes." The woman says quickly. 

The sergeant nods and looks down to her husband on the floor beneath the palm of her hands. His face was a lot paler than it usually was and she can see the light from his eyes beginning to drain away. "He doesn't have a few minutes, tell them to hurry the fuck up!" She shouts, looking over her shoulder subtly to the older woman. 

The puddle of blood she was sat in still grew but it began to slow down rapidly and she felt the beating of his heart under her hands slow down too. His eyes begin to drop again as she's yelling at him, jumping on his chest and begins pounding her hands down against his torso whilst keeping her palms covering the open wound. The sergeant tries to keep the two inches every time she bears down against his chest but as the blood spilling out from both the entry and exit wound begins to slow down even more, she feels the weight against her shoulders of giving up. 

"Hey, you're gonna be fine." Jake says, his voice the slowest it had ever been as his eyes remained glued half shut. 

She sinks into her knees as she tries to keep the blood pumping around his body but he gives her the look of not to bother. Her eyes release the built-up pressure of tears and they stream down her face as she looks to him. "I won't, not without you." She says, her hands barely pushing down against his chest anymore. 

Before Jake can even begin to start saying anything else, the paramedics burst into the room and begin working on him, taking over from Amy and shunting her off to the side. 

She watches with blurry eyes as they cut open the wound even more and clamp the bleeding off, one of the paramedics working on his chest before checking Jake's pulse against his neck whilst counting aloud. 

"Alright his pressure's steady enough to move him, backboard!" They call out and are given the plastic six-foot board and the place it under him before the three paramedics pick it up and place it on the stretcher and take him quickly out of the apartment. 

Amy runs out alongside them but is turned away at the elevator, saying that she can't ride in the ambulance with them as they need all the room to move when it's needed. She nods and goes back into the apartment, grabbing her handcuffs from her uniform and putting them tightly on Curtis's wrists as he still lay on the floor unconscious.

Grabbing her phone from her pocket she calls Terry quickly, shouting at the phone every time it rings and he doesn't pick up. 

When he does, Amy basically bursts out in a sob over the phone. 

_"Santiago, what's wrong?"_ The lieutenant asks with panic filled in his voice.

"It's Curtis, we've got him, but he shot Jake and I wasn't allowed in the ambulance with him." Amy replies quickly, the sentence flying out and the words are almost undetectable.

Not a beat passes. _"I'm on my way."_

She sits beside Curtis waiting for Terry to arrive. At some point the elderly man wakes up and smiles demonically to see the blood stained against Amy's skin, mumbling under his breath happily. 

"I hope the shit dies before he even gets there." He says with a slight cackle before Amy picks up the box and hits him around the head with it, making the man fall unconscious again against the closet.

Eventually, the lieutenant arrives and Amy collapses into him. "I never should have left him Terry, this is all my fault, I should have been there to stop it."

Terry puts his hand against her back, holding the trembling sergeant tightly. "It's not your fault, Amy, it's no ones fault, no one knew this would happen."

She sighs. "I still should never have left his side." 

Terry hugs the sergeant for another moment before the lieutenant pushes her away gently and goes through to the spare room and picking up Curtis and hauling him over his shoulder.

Before he leaves the apartment he grabs Amy too, leading her out. "I'm gonna drop you off at the hospital and then I'm taking this piece of crap to the precinct. I'll send the squad over to be with you at the hospital."

Amy smiles weakly. "Thanks Terry." She says quietly before staring down to the red stain on her hands, the blood remnants against the skin acting like a big red faded tattoo, as they leave the apartment.

* * *

This was the loudest silence to grace the planet as the squad sat in the waiting room. Amy sat on one of the chairs with her leg bouncing with nervous energy. 

Once she and Terry had arrived at the hospital he watched her walk in and made her promise to call the minute she got an update on Jake before he drove off to take Curtis to the precinct. She had gone through to the waiting room and paced around the room - bombarding every nurse or doctor as they walked through or talked to someone else about whoever they were there for. 

Eventually she had to do something. All the sitting around, waiting around, was gonna drive her crazy, so she went to the restroom to wash her hands clean from the bloodstain inked into her hands. She scrubbed so hard it seemed as though she would take the top layer of skin off from her wrists downwards but the faded red splatter refused to leave her skin. 

After what felt like an eternity of cleaning her hands over and over, using what seemed like the entirety of the container of hand wash, she finally felt like she had got the blood out of her hands and she returned to the waiting room to find Rosa standing there waiting for her. 

The female detective catches her friend in her arms as Amy collapses into her shoulder, a weight lifting from restricting her chest and she confides with her friend. "I can't believe I did this, I'm the reason he's here." 

Rosa shakes her head. "No, Amy, this isn't your fault, you had nothing to do with this." 

Amy steps back and sadly looks to her friend, tears brimming in her eyes again. "I promised I'd keep him safe, but where are we now? He was shot in the chest, Rosa, by the man that did all of this and he was dying on the spare bedroom floor all the while I was downstairs checking the fucking mail because apparently, that's more important than his fucking life." 

Rosa puts her hands out. "Santiago, look at me," she says, pulling the sergeant's attention on to her own face using her hand, "This is Jake we're talking about. He survived that accident, he survived prison, he's gonna survive this, all right, he's gonna be okay."

The sergeant glances to the plastic tile floor for a moment or two before crossing her arms over her chest and looking back up to the detective with the salty droplets rolling down her cheeks. "There was so much blood, Rosa." She says weakly, her voice shaking and quiet.

The detective doesn't say another word and she just takes the sergeant into her arms again, hugging her tightly.

An hour or so later no word had been said about Jake's condition and Amy had taken to pacing around the waiting room. All they knew was that he had been rushed in for emergency surgery to repair the damage caused by the bullet as it had gone through-and-through but that was pretty obvious that was gonna happen by the state he was in when they took him out of the apartment on a stretcher.

Just then Charles breaks Amy's trance of staring to the floor again. "I was just gonna go grab something to eat, do you want something?" He asks, furrowing his eyebrows sadly.

 _Maybe for lunch we could go over to Sal's..._ Her words from earlier that morning replay in her head for a moment. How could she have been so oblivious? How could she have made plans hours in advance without knowing what might happen? How was she supposed to know they would never make it to Sal's? 

The sergeant shakes her head in response to the detective's question. "No thanks, I'm not hungry." 

It was funny, just an hour or so before she was starving, but now the thing on the least of her mind was eating - she couldn't even think about it, she felt so sick to her stomach.

Charles nods slowly and walks down the corridor, following the sign for the cafeteria, leaving Amy stood there on her own again. 

She stares up to the clock. The time stopped again, like it did every time she looked up to it. It seemed as though the hands had been on the same time for hours now, the seconds ticking by felt like years passing through slowly. 

She sighs and lets out all the air trapped in her lungs before flopping down on to one of the chairs and letting her leg bounce again. 

This was killing her. She had to know something, but no one was giving her the information she needed - the information she desperately wanted. 

* * *

She doesn't know how long exactly it's been until someone finally walks out to them with what seemed like information regarding Jake.

She jumps up from the chair and gets into the doctor's face, the squad not that far behind her and crowding around the doctor in the hope it being good news. 

The doctor pauses for a moment before responding to the nine-nine's look of plea. "He's still in surgery, he will be for a little longer but he's doing well. The repair has proved a little tricky, the bullet grazed both the aorta and the pulmonary artery so there was a lot of bleeding to control first, but he's stable at the moment." 

Amy immediately cuts in. "How long until we can go to see him?" She asks with a worried tone in her voice. 

The doctor shrugs a little. "It's hard to say how much longer he'll be in surgery, it depends if he remains stable throughout the remainder of the surgery, and the ICU is very particular about how many people they allow in there. For most of you it will probably be tomorrow at the earliest that you will be able to see him if he is moved down to recovery by then. He's got to stay in the ICU until at least tomorrow afternoon." 

Amy nods and watches as the doctor walks away again down the corridor.

Rosa smiles slightly in the sergeant's direction. "Did that help?" She asks.

The sergeant shakes her head. "I'm not gonna feel any better until Jake is out of surgery and is okay, no earlier. If he's still on the table something can still go wrong." She says before returning to the seats.

She watches her legs bounce again before she feels the dread fill the pit of her stomach as she realizes she never told Karen about what had happened. 

She pulls her phone out with subtly trembling hands and dials her mother-in-law's number.

When Karen picks up, Amy shakily explains what's going on as she sits in silence on the other side of the line. It takes Karen a moment after Amy finishes speaking for her to answer and she just says she'll be there soon in a quiet, slow voice. 

Amy hangs up the phone and looks around the waiting room again, stopping her gaze on everything that her eyes fell on in the hope that thinking about all of the objects will speed up the time. 

It doesn't do that but it does, however, make her extremely bored of waiting. 

* * *

When the clock changed from 2 pm to 3 pm Amy sinks into the chair as the fourth hour of this ordeal begins. Her ankles were beginning to feel sore from pacing around the waiting room and up and down the corridor coming off the surgery entrance doors and her ass was hurting from sitting in the chair too. 

Rosa has offered to get her food a few times since Charles had but she had denied it every time as she still isn't feeling hungry. Her stomach feels as though it's in knots and every second that goes by the knot gets tighter as either side gets pulled further apart.

She felt the anxious energy bubble over as she gets the pending urge for a cigarette. She stands up from the chair and excuses herself, leaving out the door and standing outside the hospital and pulling out a cigarette from her purse that Terry had had Charles bring for her when the detective arrived at the hospital. 

The nicotine air filled her lungs for a moment before she blew it out with an exhale of relief. Before she can take another puff however Rosa makes her presence known beside her. In a panic, Amy throws the bud and it flies away in a strong gust of wind. 

"You couldn't hide it, but I'm not here to judge," Rosa says as she sits beside the sergeant on the bench Amy had found, "But I am here for you." 

Amy smiles at her friend. "Thanks Rosa, but I'd rather be on my own for a moment." 

The detective hesitates for a moment before nodding slowly and standing up. Just before she goes back inside she grabs her friend's attention again. "I'll come out and get you if anything changes."

Amy smiles weakly. "Thanks." She says before looking back to the cars parked outside the inpatient parking lot when Rosa disappears off into the hospital again.

She watches cars drive past, pull in and out of the hospital and her mind wanders. She swallows as she sees Jake lying on the spare bedroom floor again, blood spilling out all over his shirt and on to the carpet. She doesn't think about how there's probably gonna have a stain on the carpet in there forever, all she cares about is if Jake will make this. 

This past year had been the hardest of her life, the worst year of her life, so when Jake finally came home she felt like herself again - for that week anyway. Now all she can think about is what will happen if he doesn't make it through this surgery, how she might cope with it. If she copes with it at all. Like she said earlier, she's only just got him back from Curtis, she doesn't want to lose him again to him - definitely not lose him permanently. 

And no matter how much she doesn't want to think about losing him over this, it's all her brain will allow her to think of.

She shakes her head and stands from the bench before walking back into the waiting room in the hospital, sitting back down beside Rosa.

Time ticks by as she lets her leg bounce again and pacing around the room despite the pain just to keep time moving. 

Eventually, finally, the doctor reappears from around the corner and the squad jump up and quickly walks over to him. 

The doctor smiles slightly. "He's in the ICU now, he did great in surgery," he says before looking to Amy, "I can take you up to see him." 

Amy nods immediately and the doctor moves out the way to allow the sergeant through. 

Before they enter the room, the doctor pauses and stops Amy too. "He's still on sedation but it should wear off in less than an hour or so."

"Okay." Amy says quietly before walking through the door into the ICU recovery room Jake was in. 

When she sees him unconscious in the bed she feels her eyes fill with tears again - how there was any left she's not too sure - and she goes to his bedside, taking his limp hand in hers. 

He had wires taped to his chest under the hospital gown and she could see the top of the large gauze under there too. He had a breathing tube in, as to which the doctor explained shortly after, _"It's just to make sure he's breathing properly until he wakes up. We can take it out when he does."_ IVs are pierced into the bend of his arms and top of his hands but he still looks like he isn't fazed by it at all, like it didn't bother him in any way. He was out cold, more so than he usually is, and it breaks Amy's heart a little more to see him like this. 

"I'll give you a moment." The doctor says as Amy leans against the bed before he walks out, letting the door click in place behind him. 

Amy immediately lets the tears in her eyes fall down the side of her face. It's only a couple but they race each other to hit the floor and she looks sadly to her husband as they do. "I'm sorry, Jake, this shouldn't have happened, the doctor said you're okay but still... I should have been in there with you, and I'm sorry you've had to go through that. I promise I'm never leaving your side again," she says, a small smile pressed against her face as she squeezes his hand a little, "Never ever leaving your side." She adds, shaking her head subtly. 


	18. Eighteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is more of an epilogue, but I'm calling it eighteen because it fit better with the other chapters.
> 
> THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH FO ALL YOUR AMAZING, LOVELY, AWESOME COMMENTS ON THIS STORY. YOU REALLY ALL DO BRIGHTEN MY DAY AND YOU ARE ALL AMAZING, YOU KEPT ME GOING <333333 
> 
> Enjoy the last chapter!

_(three months later)_

When Amy entered the apartment, she noted how quiet it seemed. It brought her back four, five, six months ago - returning home from work in the eerie silence and dark of her apartment - but she smiles to Jake sat on the couch playing on his phone.

"Hey, you got out of bed." She says with a smile as she kicks off her shoes and places her coat on the rack before going over to the couch to sit beside Jake.

He looks up and smiles back in her direction. "Yeah, I did, you sound really surprised." He says.

She shrugs. "I can't help it, you don't really get out of bed," she replies truthfully with a smile, "How are you feeling?"

Jake nods his head, looking around the living room slightly before dropping his gaze back to Amy. "I'm feeling good, better than I have, I mean it still hurts if I stand up too long but the doctor said it can take up to six months for it to heal properly." 

She nods along with him and speaks up when he stops with a confident tone. "I know, Jake, I was there when he said that," she says with the smile still on her face but as she talks again her face Iowa straight, "But I was more talking about the whole Antonio thing, I know for a fact your were still feeling rough about it."

Jake's face falls at the sound of his name as he drops his gaze to the floor, feeling his chest sink in a little.

It had been three months since everything transpired. When Jake was moved to out of the ICU the day after the surgery, he had been bombarded by Charles and everyone else from the nine-nine. 

But when it was just him, Amy - she refused to leave his side no matter what while he was in the hospital and for a good three weeks after they went back home - and Terry, the superior sat in the second chair claiming he needed to talk to him. 

_"The Minnesota police raided Curtis's warehouse this morning," the lieutenant had said, "There was a DOA, they're saying he had been dead a week or so already before they got there. The man's family confirmed it was Antonio. I'm sorry."_

He pauses for a moment before answering the sergeant's question with a subtle nod of the head, keeping his gaze locked on the floor. "I'm alright." 

Amy sighs a little, gaining her husband's attention up from the wooden floor. She points to him slightly. "This doesn't look alright, Jake, you can't beat yourself up about this, what happened with Antonio wasn't your fault. Curtis was the one that killed him, not you." 

"I know that, but he died trying to protect me. If I hadn't have gotten tangled up in that stupid drug case, Curtis would still be out there, I wouldn't feel like there's a knife stabbing in my chest every time I stand or walk around for more than fifteen minutes and Antonio would still be alive with his family. The accident would never have happened, I wouldn't have forgotten our entire relationship, we would be fine, no problem," he says sadly before looking back down to the wood paneling under his feet as he repeats, "And Antonio would still be alive."

The sergeant puts her hand out, grasping his and pulling his head up to hers. "Jake, it is not your fault, you need to accept that otherwise it is going to ruin you. Antonio's death was not your fault as will it never be your fault."

Jake nods slowly along with her, smiling a little as he sighs. He quickly changes the subject rather than continuing on the fact and having Amy argue with him longer about it. "Dinner? I can call the Polish place you like."

She smiles back at him but shakes her head. "I think we've had too much of that recently, don't you agree?" 

Jake shrugs. "I'm just trying to prove my memory is getting better."

She raises her hand and puts it against his shoulder, leaning in forward an inch. "I know your memory is getting better Jake, you've even managed to recite the first fifteen minutes of Die Hard without having remembered watching the movie for twenty years." 

He chuckles slightly. "That I was proud of."

"I was proud of you too." Amy replies.

The apartment goes into a comfortable silence as the two of them look to each other with smiles plastered on their faces. Jake's grin drops as he goes back to the first conversation, his eyes becoming filled with concern. 

"You really don't think it's my fault?" Jake questions.

Amy feels her heart sink a little as she thinks about the fact he still blames himself. She shakes her head slowly. "No, I don't," she says, "Antonio sacrificed himself to save you. You can't spend the rest of your life dwelling on that fact. He knew the risks of what he was doing but he still did it to help you. You cannot blame yourself, you had nothing to do with it." 

Jake inhales through his nose sharply, looking around the apartment before dropping his gaze to her but Amy cuts him off before he can speak.

"So, dinner? What are you thinking?" She asks, turning her head over to the TV and reaching for the remote to turn it on but she looks to he side to see Jake staring at the side of her face.

She looks to him with curiosity before she sees the change in his eyes as he looks to her, switching quickly to glance at her lips for a brief second. She feels herself do the same, looking to him with adoration as he leans in, putting his lips against hers gently and cautiously as if he was afraid she might break. She runs her hand up as the kiss heats up, resting it under his ear against his cheek, leaning into the kiss a little more as he runs his hand down her back - sending shivers down her body. 

After a moment he pulls away, keeping his forehead against hers. He swallows thickly as she feels her breath hitch in the back of her throat as she struggles to get her words out. 

"What was that for?" She asks eventually, her voice a quiet mumble into him. 

He shrugs his shoulder lightly, keeping his gaze printed on her face. "Just to say thank you - for everything you've done for me." He says before reaching his lips forward again, meeting hers again quickly.

Her arms move up past his neck, her fingers beginning to run through the ends of his hair. She feels him hum quietly into her mouth as she tightens her hand into a loose fist in his hair as he runs his hands back down her back and waist. 

He pulls apart as quickly as he delved in. "And that one was just because I wanted to." He says, his voice quiet but deeper than it usually is. 

She doesn't let him say anything else as she pushes her lips against his instead this time, deepening the kiss and dinner is quickly long forgotten. 

**Author's Note:**

> Please comment and kudos, they really do keep me going, I love hearing what people think on my writing and it makes me so happy to read comments - even if it's a long paragraph or just one word. I love them all. PLEASE TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK OF THIS STORY!


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